Ask for an old American classic movie ~

Chinese translation: the past of America

Hong Kong and Taiwan translation: American past/Four Seas Brothers

The American era

Director: Sergio Leone.

Main performance: Robert De Niro.

James woods james woods

Jennifer Lynn Connelly Jennifer Lynn Connelly

Joe Percy joe pesci

Danny aiello danny aiello

William Forsythe William Forsythe

Elizabeth mcgovern elizabeth mcgovern

Tuesday weld, welding on Tuesday

Issuing company: Warner Bros.

Movie genre: crime drama.

Grade: r

Duration: 229 minutes

Country/Region: Italy, USA

Dialogue languages: English, French and Italian.

Color: color

Format: 35mm widescreen system

Mixed: mono

Rating: It was rated as R because of strong violence, sexual content, language and some drug use. (Edited version)

Level:

Hong kong: Finland: K- 18 Finland: K- 16 Germany: 16 Netherlands: 12 Sweden: 15 Brazil: 14 USA: r Canada: r Canada:/kloc.

Production cost: USD 30 million (estimated)

Copyright: Regent Entertainment (USA) Limited.

Shooting date:1982 June14-1983 April 22nd.

Premiere date: 1 June 19841.

Shooting format: 35mm

Print format: 35 mm

[Edit this paragraph] Awards

This film was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Director from 65438 to 0985.

[Edit this paragraph] The plot of the movie

Sergio leone, an Italian director who became famous for making Italian westerns, led the audience for more than 40 years, telling the feud between four childhood playmates who grew up together in the Jewish community of new york.

Robert De Niro, the gold medal winner, plays the role of noodles, which is the leading role among the four leading roles. The film focuses on the criminal career of Elonso and his partners. It is a gangster epic film that describes human conflicts such as friendship and opposition, loyalty and betrayal. The background of the times spans important events in American history, such as economic panic, prohibition and World War I.

Actor james woods also played a role in the film; This film was shortlisted for the Golden Globe Award for Best Director and provided music for many famous films. Ennio morricone, an Italian national treasure master, was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Music for this film, while ennio morricone brought the audience back to the Jewish community in new york many years ago with sad and nostalgic music to relive the past customs.

This is one of Sergio Lionel's "American Trilogy", which is the image of America in the eyes of Italians in the 1920s and 1960s. The director changed the mode of traditional Hollywood westerns and created American underworld figures from a unique perspective.

In the United States in the 1920s, new york, nicknamed "Noodles", met the clever and cunning Max with several friends of the same age. They began to engage in smuggling. Soon, Noodles killed someone in a fight and was put in prison.

A few years later, Tiao was released from prison, and all his friends became mature and strong young people. Under the leadership of Max, they returned to their old jobs and started a series of robbery, theft and extortion activities. With the deepening of criminal activities, Max seems to be carried away by victory, and even includes the Federal Reserve Bank as the target of action. Noodles who had been behind bars couldn't bear to watch their friends go to ruin, so they secretly called the police and tried to force Max to stop. The police had a fierce gun battle with Noodle's friends, and Max and others were all killed. Noodles, in extreme regret and pain, left the place where they grew up, and the girl they loved deeply moved away from home.

Decades later, the dying noodles returned to their hometown, only to find that everything was carefully planned by Max. He got rid of his accomplices with noodles and the police, but lost his shell and swallowed up the huge sum of money of the gang. After a makeover, he became a politician and a celebrity in high society. Max begged noodles to kill himself, dreamed of atonement, and was rejected by noodles. Max jumped into the garbage shredder in despair and committed suicide.

[Edit this paragraph] behind-the-scenes production

This is an epic gangster film depicting human conflicts such as friendship and opposition, loyalty and betrayal, directed by Italian director Sergio Leon, who became famous for filming Italian westerns. It is one of Lionel's "American Trilogy" and the image of America in the eyes of Italians in the 1920s and 1960s. The director changed the mode of traditional Hollywood westerns and created American underworld figures from a unique perspective. The film is quite imposing, and its depiction of violence is poetic. The time span is 40 years, with the Great Depression, Prohibition, World War I and other major events as the background. The film only selects a few characters and events in the original work and adopts a typical Hollywood narrative structure. The difference is that the space-time structure of the film is quite unique. The story is gradually unfolded through the memory of the protagonist Noodles, and the story is always unfolded in a chaotic debt dispute between Noodles and Max. This film won two Oscars for best music and best costume design from 1984, and was nominated for best director from 1985.

[Edit this paragraph] Wonderful film reviews

America's Past: Nostalgia of Life, Ashes of Time

How many oceans have disappeared in the beach?

How much sand in the stone is praying hard?

How long did you stay in the shell?

Crying in the corner of singing

How many kinds of fish have pearly eyes?

Give up life

How many horns are there in coral in the morning?

The shadows of stars in many crystals.

How many seeds of laughter are there in the gull's throat?

How many homesick gossamers shuttle in the orbit of the stars at night

How much fertile soil

For the root of this word:

you

In all the explosions.

Behind the secret

You-Nelly Sachs

My memory is blurred. For example, when was the first time I stood on a stool at home and tiptoed to secretly search my video locker? For example, when I first learned to play Panasonic L 15 video recorder, when was it? For another example, when my father pointed to a video labeled "The Past of America" and said "I have been in it all my life", when was that?

Not only memories, but also my eyes are beginning to blur.

The video tape is still there, but the sound of L 15 can no longer be played. Everyone in the tape speaks a foreign language, but occasionally an aunt who can't recognize her age suddenly jumps out to explain the story and says something like "noodles". Later, she learned that this thing is called "internal reference".

I regard what I see from it as my childhood, which is as strange as treating sunny days as my high school teenagers.

The difference is that I was only a few years old when I looked at the past in America, so I felt old.

friendship

"You see, I also have a story, Mr. Bailey. I once had a friend. A dear friend. I turned him in to save his life. He is dead. But he wants this. Things are bad for my friends and bad for me. " -noodles

No film describes the loyalty and betrayal of friendship like this.

Everything is beyond words.

Except for two white-haired old people, they looked at the past silently, as if facing the ancient ocean, and buried the deepest feelings of human beings.

fulfil

"Now it's time for you to confess naturally, let your tears boil and let the sad thunder wake up. Silent confession, long confession, deep confession, like cold and steep starlight shining in a lonely valley, like a black monk crawling in front of a golden lacquer shrine. "

Noodles: Self-escape

As the beginning and end of the film imply, his life is like opium, a dream.

He has been on the run, but he has been hunted by the past and haunted by shadows.

The ringing of the phone in the opium den reminded him of a secret message to the police station, which led to the death of three friends; The pursuit of the enemy put him on the train leaving his hometown, which made him flee for 35 years; Minister "Bailey" invited him to see the veil covering up the past, which almost deceived him all his life; Even though Max's appearance revealed the truth, he still refused to admit that the scene 35 years ago was a play, and he still refused to admit that he was a former best friend who took everything away from him. He was so sad that he deceived himself.

Finally, the old man seems to have returned to the opium den 35 years ago. He was lying in bed, quietly waiting for the unanswered phone ring, but the phone didn't ring. So he smiled at the camera. All his regrets and pains were washed away by dreams.

Disillusionment of fantasy is a doomed tragedy in life ... In a blink of an eye, perhaps, the last flame has been collected, leaving only limited embers and ashes, as well as self-harm and masturbation in the afterheat. "

Max: I killed myself.

He is like a sun burning with faith, surrounded by planets illuminated by his brilliance. He is destined to be earth-shattering, but if destruction is inevitable, he will choose a dazzling explosion and let the whole galaxy accompany him to perish.

His ambition made him desperate, and robbing the Federal Reserve Bank was his dream. He won't die in a madhouse like his father, he yearns for the glory of the ending. When the noodles told him "you are really crazy", he was so angry that he paced back and forth on the shining beach, and endless loneliness poured out in that fateful pace.

He retaliated fiercely against the betrayal of noodles. "When you are cheated by your friends, you will fight back."

But when the "doomsday judgment" comes, he can only count on noodles to solve his own life. That will prove that he has paid off a friend's lifelong debt. He even took out his pocket watch (a token and witness of friendship! ), my wrinkled eyes prayed "Let my mind die peacefully", but when Noodles replied "I haven't held a gun for many, many years. Even with glasses on, my eyes are not as good as before. My hands are shaking. I never want to miss it. " He knew that he would not be saved. So he despaired and disappeared into the garbage truck.

love

"Although years have ruined everything in this vast world, there are always new and old alternations in any personnel, but there are exceptions from time to time, that is, young and beautiful residents who belong to individuals ... those strange and familiar men who are suddenly far away because of her youth are well preserved, a little reckless, a little melancholy or silence brought by faint friendship, and a little love born of a smile or a look."

Thirty-five years later, Noodles met Deborah in the dressing room behind the theater. Little by little, she took off her clothes, and we were surprised to find that her face was still young and beautiful, and the wind erosion of the years left no trace on her. Maybe what we see is just another illusion in the eyes of noodles, a goddess who will never grow old in his heart, just like Cleopatra played by Deborah on the stage, "Age can't make her wither".

Like Max, Deborah always pursues her dreams enthusiastically. She is clearly aware of everything she wants and foresees the result of this choice ambitiously. When they were teenagers, she read him a poem: "My lover ... will always be an insignificant punk, so he will never be my lover." What a pity. " ; When they were all adults, she gently said to him, "You are the only person I care about" and "But tomorrow I will go to Oliwood".

This dilemma made her refuse to say hello to noodles all the time, and finally let reason prevail over emotion. When he watched her dance through the bathroom wall, she would turn her back to take off her clothes just to remind her brother that there was a cockroach in the bathroom when she went out (that was when Jennifer Lynn Connelly was young); He followed her home when people in residential areas went to church, and she would leave the door on purpose, but she said, "Someone should stay to watch the shop in case of thieves"; When he sits in the car and sends her away without saying a word, she will gently send a kiss but refuse further sex; Even after he raped her, she only pulled down the train curtains and closed them slowly when he appeared.

Here, noodle's personality tragedy ruined his love again. He is always wavering between friends and women (Deborah: "Run, noodles, your mother is calling you." ); When he realized at the last moment before leaving that Deborah would leave forever, the anguish and desire he had accumulated for a long time could only erupt like an animal and occupy Deborah's beauty and youth in a violent way.

Thirty-five years later, Noodles met Deborah in the dressing room backstage of the theater. Gradually, she took off her clothes and asked him why he came to see her. The first reason, he said, was to see if it was wise for her to refuse to be an actress. He said, "Yes, you did it. You were great." But everything has changed. She has become Max's woman.

time

Leon, the director of this film, once pointed out the core position of flashback structure in Once upon a time in America: "Because time is one of the protagonists of the film-this film is about memory, nostalgia and death."

It can be seen that the United States was not so much a brother like the godfather as a grandson of Citizen Kane.

For example, the pocket watch stolen from a drunk not only witnessed the life and death of friendship, but also implied that noodles and Max lived in their own time all their lives.

For example, the dialogue between fat man and noodles in 1968. Moe: "What have you been doing all this time?" Noodles: "Go to bed early". This not only means that noodles have lost time like Proust's novel characters, but also shows that his present is the constant awakening of the past.

Another example is an epic detail in the film: the rise of Brooklyn Bridge in the background symbolizes the growth of noodles, which were still young when the bridge was still piling; After the completion of the bridge, he became the leader of a gang; When the bridge was surrounded by highways 35 years later, it became as old as this bridge, and the world abandoned them.

"The film gives us an opportunity to try to shape the world we can't see, and the narrative itself is also reconstructing time. It seems that the beauty brought by that era can't be expressed in words ... In daily life, time has formed an interpenetrating relationship between people and things. The director's intention is to show his talent in arranging this arrangement ... He bent down to pick up a firewood, but after a long time, he told us that it was just a match.

dream

Noodles have his dreams, Max has his dreams, and Deborah has her dreams.

However, when everyone's dream is broken, we know that this is the loss of the American dream.

This film combines quite a few characteristics of the times-11920s: dark brown eyes, Jewish shops, residents, horses, carriages, cakes, clothes, corrupt policemen; Prohibition; A society where moderation and violence are intertwined; Abandoned seaports, warehouses and faded signboards; Underground bars and opium dens, huge restaurants for decorative arts; 60' s: The background music is the Beatles, hippies with weird voices, TV programs that expose corruption and scandals. ......

In the 1960s, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, the civil rights movement rose, and the voice of anti-war grew louder and louder. Once, all the hypocritical American myths were shattered, and only the bloody and dirty truth surfaced. In Once upon a time in America, we saw how societies, laws, policies and even religious groups quickly changed their faces in order to survive the fittest. As Conway told Max, today's gangster did more business overnight than he did in the past two years.

1968, Leon filmed in Once upon a time in the West, which profoundly revealed the driving force behind American history: "Let it never happen".

Once upon a time in America is the end of Leon's trilogy of examining America. The first two films were Once upon a time in the West and Ducks, you idiot! (French title means former revolution). The trilogy expounds the director's reflection on the United States from the perspectives of westworld, Mexican Revolution and foreign immigrants. The real theme of Once upon a Time in America is the disillusionment of dreams. Similarly, Kafka also reflected the inversion/misinterpretation and loss of ideals from the perspective of European immigrants (Karl Rothman) in the novel Amerika. It's different.

Noodles, a sensitive person who misses the past in reality, are typical representatives of romantic ideals. Similarly, we can refer to 1979 in which Allen plays Isaac Davis in Manhattan. These two stories not only happened in Manhattan, but also showed the characters' resistance to the established superficial things. So both of them can be understood as the author's rejection of the culture of the same period. A hero tries to impose his perception on "ideal Manhattan". At the same time, the two films also present their own charming Brooklyn Bridge: one is black and white under the smog, and the other is the lost childhood reflected in the ups and downs. Finally, both films show the preservation of values in decadence-even if the transformation of the United States makes this moral persistence less and less valuable, so that others claim to cut it off.

Self - image

"Mirror" plays a very important role in this film, which is to reveal the essence of the characters.

The first place: the station. The escaped noodles stood in front of the mirror, and then, 35 years later, they became themselves. At this time, the background music was Yesterday by Lennon and McCartney, but the lyrics were erased. Only the faint Yesterday and Sudden reminded us of vague memories, changes in appearance and lost youth. And endless homesickness. Gazing, he seems to remember Deborah's words 50 years ago: "Noodles, look at yourself in the mirror."

Second place: the mirror I saw in the street 50 years ago. At that time, he was sad but full of hope. Besides, noodles, both young and old, suffered the same blow-facing the cruel reality and Deborah's unattainable/lofty beauty.

The third place: the dressing room. Noodles and Deborah are having an unfinished conversation 35 years ago. She is sitting in front of a big cosmetic mirror, and he is standing at a distance. There are two faces of his lover in the mirror. She is still young and beautiful, but his is old and tired. She forgave him from the bottom of her heart. But they couldn't say a word.

To understand the function of noodles, we should always remember the hint of "mirror": noodles always bear a heavy self-image, a body image that he hated because of Deborah's words and deeds since childhood, and a mental anxiety and trouble that has never changed for a long time. Although his relationship with Eve (an innocent woman) later helped him express his feelings, the encounter with Deborah eventually deepened this deep inferiority complex caused by the unreachable distance.

But the "mirror" in the dressing room also made Deborah re-examine herself. Her seemingly eternal beauty is masked by the mask of cosmetics. When she gradually took off her clothes, an ordinary person as fragile and miserable as noodles replaced the "goddess".

The so-called victory or defeat is only one step away (like Max's ending).

Who dreamed first? -The sentimental gangster love song "Once upon a time in America" was written by Riggs.

Based on different positions, just like the relationship between a magnifying glass and a microscope, if the epic godfather trilogy has exhausted the vast blood and tears of gangsters, then "Once upon a time in America" is like a documentary recording the struggle career of a group of gangsters fighting for rivers and lakes. The godfather series has a broader vision, but the writing of once upon a time in America is more delicate. ...

Before the definition of violence aesthetics, gangster aesthetics has been perfectly interpreted by these two classics. "Once upon a time in America" inherits the godfather series and adopts memento mori's narrative method to unfold the plot. I don't want to say more about the plot. There are already excellent film reviews to explain it. Here are some links:

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After reading the comments of several netizens, I found that I left several key points when I watched the movie. For example, the change of Brooklyn Bridge confirms the growth process of the protagonist noodle (played by De Niro), and for example, after Mequez jumped into the garbage truck and committed suicide, several cars full of carnival young men and women passed by in the street. I thought it was an accident. After reading the film reviews of netizens, I realized that it was a carnival scene after the lifting of the ban. The director used a shooting technique to skillfully combine two scenes at different times. A young man with a face in the distance came face to face. When he didn't have time to look back carefully, the young man had disappeared into the boundless darkness. ...

Of course, some netizens have watched it more than ten times, and I just watched it once. The details are naturally less. This is the essence of a classic worthy of repeated appreciation. Every time I watch it, I find something new. ...

I have to mention the soul scene of this play: childhood noodles dug a brick hole in the toilet to watch Deborah, a girl in the warehouse, dance. Jennifer. As it turns out, Connery is another example of reaching the peak of acting as a teenager. Her childishness hides her maturity beyond her age, which indicates that this girl will grow into a far-sighted woman. The flour in the flour warehouse fluttered around under Deborah's gentle and petite dance steps, like snow or snow, like fog or fog. The picture embodies a kind of obscurity between reality and illusion, like a fairy, stirring the heart of the seed of love. Noodles' eyes kept turning, staring at what looked like a stage. It turned out that he had fallen in love with Deborah from the beginning, and he was already watching her dance on her stage as an audience. This hint eventually became the biggest irony of their lives. When little Deborah found noodles, she called him to her side and read the Bible with her. That was when their purest love impression was established. When Noodles wanted to kiss this fairy-like girl, the appearance of Mequez interrupted this pure first kiss ... Facing the choice, Noodles preferred friends to love. This scene also implies that Mequez and Deborah will be the fetters of noodles for life. Mequez always takes advantage of him and takes everything that belongs to him, including the crazy mistress who mistook one for another. Noodles lost Deborah forever from the moment they lost their first kiss. If he had chosen Deborah regardless of Mequez, would it have changed the life of this girl who thought rationally too early? Noodles, including our audience, will never find the answer.

With enough preparation, the story of De Niro raping Deborah after he was released from prison seems reasonable. This woman is too selfish. When De Niro wanted to pursue her lost love again, she didn't even give him a gentle chance. Since there is no hope for the love between you, why do you want to see him again? Deborah's behavior, whether out of revenge or for the permanent possession of this man (I agree with the latter), showed enough shame and selfishness from the beginning. The ugliness of this woman's selfishness is even uglier than De Niro's rape of her. Since Deborah chose to pursue her own career, she should never meet noodles. She clearly knows that noodles love her so much. Isn't it like the irrational performance of a career-oriented woman who has experienced many rivers and lakes? Personally, the meaning expressed in this scene is more about the director's tendency. He tends to express the irreparable pain when men can't get love. Therefore, Deborah is in this unique position to express her needs and serve the theme of the work. There is a certain degree of unreality here. If Deborah just softened her character temporarily because of her naturally vacillating character, then she would be raped if she woke up and resolutely left the noodles. That rape scene is the most tolerable I have ever seen. I used to be extremely disgusted with men using violence against women. The pain faced by noodles, as a netizen said, is difficult for a female audience to understand.

Besides the pain of love, the pain of friendship is more comforting. When robbing a banker, the hungry mistress asked the gangster to rape her during estrus. She was good at controlling her lust. Mequez was unmoved, because he would not be disturbed by other things when committing the crime, but the noodles vented desperately until Mequez reminded him to leave. This is another contrast of their personalities. Later, Xiao San met their gang of robbers again, and Mequez played a game to let Xiao San guess that it was the man she had sex with at that time. As a result, Xiao San mistakenly thought that Mequez was the object at that time, and Noodles disagreed, because he was not interested in this woman at all, and the suggestion of substitution appeared here again and again. In order to save Mequez, Noodles reported to the police, but Mequez caught her. So Noodle always thought that he had killed his brother, and he was burdened with guilt and loneliness for more than 30 years. It turned out that Mequez had lied to him. Not only did Mequez not die, but he also took him, Deborah. When Deborah met the noodles for the second time, she kept wiping off the makeup on her face until she didn't know whether the tears blurred the makeup powder or the makeup powder blurred the tears. Under the heavy makeup, she concealed her fragile and true feelings. ...

The evil gangster life ruined their lives, and even the trade union activists who were active in the labor field at first were finally killed.

Live a life of trading power and money, and become the upper class in the new era. ...

Mequez finally hoped to die in the hands of noodles in order to get the final salvation of his soul, but noodles refused him. Noodles said sadly, "We wasted our whole lives." , completely made a final summary for this "American past".

At the end of the film, the twisted smile of noodles was blurred by the smoke, adding a final rest to this sentimental gangster love song.

This is the most painful film I have ever seen. ...

[Edit this paragraph] About movies

Once upon a time in America is not a genre film with obvious style. Although it obtained the story background of the film from the popular gangster movies in the 1930s and 1970s (the original author of this film, Harry Gray, is indeed a real ex-gangster), gangster movies only provide a story carrier. Noodles, the hero of the film, are not like gangsters in traditional gangster movies. He is more like an ordinary person who succumbs to the environment and intuition, and at the same time, he has paid the price of his life to seek the ultimate salvation. In fact, director Sergio Leone carefully selected and considered this film, which is why, as an Italian, he set the characters of this film in the background of Jewish gangs. Most American gangster movies are about Italian gangs or Irish gangs, while the Jewish gangs, which were unprecedentedly active during the prohibition period, are rarely mentioned in the movies.

To some extent, "Once upon a time in America" is a pure author's film, which bears all the "American complex" of director Sergio Leon (Sergio Leon himself was not born in the United States, nor did he live in the United States for a long time). What he wants to tell is not a traditional story with complete logic, but a pure self-expression of his favorite American history, culture and spirit in his life. Because his understanding of the other side of the ocean is not an Italian-American who grew up on the street like Coppola, but acquired and accumulated through American movies on the screen, he will shoot a film with an American theme with non-American temperament to complete what he has been asking for all his life.

[Edit this paragraph] Introduction by the director

Sergio Leon, born in Rome in 192 1, is the son of silent film director Vincenzo Leone. He is famous for creating "spaghetti westerns". He filmed a handful of dollars on 1964. Starring Clint Eastwood, who was not very famous at that time, the second "A few dollars more" and the third "Good, Bad and Ugly" were still starring Eastwood, so they were regarded as trilogy.

At this point, Leon has formed his own unique style, such as Moriquand's composition (Leon's elementary school classmate Enio Morricone is a royal composer who started to cooperate with a dollar), dramatic lens movement and close-up of characters' eyes.

1968, Lyon filmed the classic Once upon a time in the west, which marked a leap in Lyon's artistic career. The scene is slow, beautiful and shocking, which is a perfect tribute to the simple spirit of the old west.

Later, Duck, you idiot were called "Zapata West" ("Zapata West", Zapata,1877-19, Mexican revolutionary, leader of land reform movement, commander of peasant uprising army); Another masterpiece of this genre is Marlon Brando's "Burn! ",but the scene is set in1a South American island at the beginning of the 8th century.

1984, Lyon filmed his second masterpiece (and last work) "Once upon a time in America". The film lasted nearly four hours and was badly cut when it was released in the United States. This is the best plot in all Leon's works, with a leisurely rhythm and perfect compactness. It will always be in my top ten.

Sergio Leone died on 1989.