What filmmaking techniques does Once Upon a Time in America use?

CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in Once Upon a Time in America (1984): Fractured Memory Editing, Ennio Morricone Structural Score, Non-Linear Narrative, Retrospective Voiceover and Slow Build Runtime.

Who directed Once Upon a Time in America?

Sergio Leone directed Once Upon a Time in America, released in 1984. CineCode also covers A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Duck, You Sucker (1971).

What films are similar to Once Upon a Time in America?

Films that share techniques with Once Upon a Time in America include The Irishman (2019), The Usual Suspects (1995), Hulk (2003), Duck, You Sucker (1971).

Crime · Drama

Once Upon a Time in America

Sergio Leone, 1984

David 'Noodles' Aaronson returns to New York decades after he betrayed his gang. He pieces together a life of crime, friendship and loss across 3 eras of the twentieth century. Leone's final film uses the gangster epic to explore memory and guilt. It is also about a past you can't go back to, one that was already being destroyed while he lived it.

1 Editing 1 Sound 3 Narrative

At a glance

Once Upon a Time in America is a 1984 crime and drama film directed by Sergio Leone. This breakdown covers 5 techniques (1 editing, 1 sound and 3 narrative), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, The Irishman uses several of the same techniques.

Editing

Fractured Memory Editing

Cutting between the present and scattered, out-of-order flashbacks, the way a painful memory comes back in pieces. You put the backstory together as the character remembers it.

How this film uses it

Leone arranges Noodles' memories as fragments that gather around his guilt and ignores the order they happened in. The 1920s, 1930s and 1968 timelines are cut together by emotional logic. A smell, a sound or a location sets off a memory, and the film follows it wherever it leads.

Where to see it

The opium den sequence. Noodles drifts between memory and the present, and the editing moves between eras as freely as thought.

Sound

Ennio Morricone Structural Score

Treating the score as part of the film's structure, sometimes writing it before the shoot and playing it on set. The acting, camera and editing are then shaped around the music.

How this film uses it

The film's pan flute themes, played by Gheorghe Zamfir, are how it remembers things, and they do far more than sit in the background. Each time a theme returns, it brings back the feelings from the earlier times you heard it. The score becomes a second story that runs alongside the one you see.

Where to see it

The closing sequence. The Morricone theme returns as the film's last word, and it carries the full weight of everything that came before it.

Narrative

Non-Linear Narrative

Telling the story out of order by jumping between time periods. The order you see events in changes how you understand them.

How this film uses it

The film has 3 parts: the 1968 story that frames it, the 1930s tragedy at its center and the 1920s origin story. It shows them in an order that puts emotional reveals ahead of plot. You only work out the real order of events gradually. When you do, you find that what looked like Noodles' crime was something else entirely.

Where to see it

The film's big structural reveal. You learn how the 1968 storyline connects to the 1930s tragedy. Putting events in their real order changes the meaning of every scene before it.

Narrative

Retrospective Voiceover

Having a narrator tell the story from some point after it happened. The events feel like memory, and you sense early on that something will be lost.

How this film uses it

The film has no voiceover, and Noodles never narrates. He carries a story whose ending he has lived with for decades, and he embodies it. He is out of place in the present, and that puts every flashback inside a feeling of loss. The childhood friendships, the youthful crimes and the love story are all being remembered by a man who knows they are gone.

Where to see it

Noodles' return to the old neighborhood. A grown man's body moves through the places of his childhood, and every location already feels like mourning.

Narrative

Slow Build Runtime

Running the film longer than its genre normally needs, on purpose. The extra time lets you live with the characters, so the emotional payoff feels in proportion to the wait.

How this film uses it

Leone's film runs nearly 4 hours, and it asks you to experience time the way Noodles does. The past can't be compressed, memory can't be sped up and grief doesn't resolve. The length makes a point, since you cannot rush through a life. I never felt it as an epic showing off.

Where to see it

The extended childhood sequences. The friendships that shaped him and his first crimes get their full time, with no montage to speed through them. The film insists that the length is the meaning.

Questions

Once Upon a Time in America: quick answers

What filmmaking techniques does Once Upon a Time in America use?: CineCode breaks down 5 techniques in Once Upon a Time in America (1984): Fractured Memory Editing, Ennio Morricone Structural Score, Non-Linear Narrative, Retrospective Voiceover and Slow Build Runtime.
Who directed Once Upon a Time in America?: Sergio Leone directed Once Upon a Time in America, released in 1984. CineCode also covers A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Duck, You Sucker (1971).
What films are similar to Once Upon a Time in America?: Films that share techniques with Once Upon a Time in America include The Irishman (2019), The Usual Suspects (1995), Hulk (2003), Duck, You Sucker (1971).

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