Gangs of New York, dir Martin Scorsese, 2002, and Once Upon a Time in America, dir Sergio Leone, 1984

Made twenty years apart but released on DVD within a week of each other, Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York and Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In America, are both gangster epics with coming-of-age storylines set in meticulous recreations of the swarming streets of historical New York. That's not all they have in common. Gangs of New York was shot by an American director at Rome's Cinecittà's studios, while Once Upon A Time In America was shot by an Italian director in, amongst other locations, Brooklyn; both were long-cherished personal projects of their directors; both are coming-of-age stories; both were the subjects of fierce arguments over running times between directors and studios; and both, despite some reservations, are at bottom fine examples of old-fashioned movie-making.

Gangs of New York was a project Martin Scorsese famously nurtured for thirty years, ever since devouring in one day Herbert Asbury's eponymous account of life in the slums of nineteenth century New York's Five Points. It was eventually greenlighted when Leonardo DiCaprio, who after Titanic became one of Hollywood's most bankable stars, came aboard, but the length and shape of its final cut became a contest of wills between Scorsese and producer Harvey Weinstein, who eventually won the shorter and more commercial cut that's presented here. Swarming with hundreds of extras, every frame packed with historical detail, it's beautifully and balletically shot by Michael Balhaus entirely on production designer Dante Ferretti's stunningly detailed recreation of the Five Points on one of Cinecittà's vast lots, but its spectacular ambition is weakened by a storyline that neither lifts itself above cliche nor connects to the history Scorsese was so eager to capture. The movie kicks off in 1846, with a pitched battle between gangs of Anglo-Saxon Native Americans and Irish immigrant gangs led by Priest Vallon, who is killed in front of his young son, Amsterdam, by the leader of the Natives, Daniel Day-Lewis's Bill the Butcher Cutting. We flash forward sixteen years, when in the middle of the Civil War Amsterdam (DiCaprio) returns to the Five Points, vowing to avenge his father by killing Bill the Butcher, who's now in uneasy alliance with Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall. Amsterdam manages to infiltrate Bill's gang, but his quest for revenge is complicated by Bill's paternal interest in him, and he's betrayed after falling for Bill's former mistress, Jenny (Cameron Diaz, winsome in auburn curls). Bill beats and brands Amsterdam, he's nursed back to health by Jenny, and unites the Irish gangs for a final confrontation with the Natives in the middle of the Draft Riots, a protest against the Conscription Act which hordes of gangsters turned into an orgy of indiscriminate looting, burning and lynching.

Some critics have suggested that an extended director's cut might smooth out holes in plot and characterization, most especially the unconvincing romance between Jenny and Amsterdam, but I think that no amount of recutting could resolve the way the story veers into cheap romanticism by portraying the risen Amsterdam as a synthesis of Christ and Che Guevara, and his gangster cohorts as noble freedom fighters. Having thrown away his Bible after quitting the orphanage for Five Points, Amsterdam is able to gain victory over Bill the Butcher only after he regains the faith of his father, signalled by a ludicrously symbolic scene in which a struggle with a corrupt cop pulls down a dropcloth to reveal an altar lit by a glowing sunset. Thereafter, Amsterdam preaches liberation theology, the scars of his beating and branding miraculously melt away, and his final confrontation with Bill is resolved by a deus ex machina device that relies upon a naval bombardment on rioting New Yorkers which never actually happened, but which, apart from a mid-riot robbery suffered by Jenny, is the only link between Amsterdam's story and the insurrection that very nearly drove law and order from Manhattan. Restoration of the missing hour and a half of material may bridge the gap between Hollywood romance and historical reality -- perhaps we follow Amsterdam as he plunges into the riots to save Jenny -- but as it stands, Gangs of New York's epic sweep never quite coheres. Still, there's an enormous amount to admire in what was a bolder and more ambitious movie than almost any other in 2002. Although DiCaprio's performance was slated on the movie's release, it would be hard for any actor to make much of the impossibly noble Amsterdam, and for the most part he's an engaging, fresh-faced hero with several fine moments of self-doubt. Much has been made of Day-Lewis's extraordinary performance -- suffice it to say that his lethal strut and glinting malice is just as enjoyable on a second viewing -- and as in Casino and Goodfellas, Scorsese vividly conveys complex information through montage and quick cutaways, makes the plentiful violence look worse than it is by skilful editing, and his set-pieces, from the first rumble between the two gangs, through a pitched battle between two fire crews and the sly circle that turns fresh immigrants into cannon-fodder boarding ships bound for war past the coffins of their predecessors, to the final recreation of the Draft Riots, are thrillingly visceral. The movie is presented in a two-disc DVD set which contains the 167 minute studio cut (spread over both discs, with an incredibly badly timed break), an intermittent but energetic commentary by Scorsese, featurettes on costume set design and the history of the Five Points, a Discovery Channel documentary, an exploration of the sets and a Five Points study guide, trailers, and a video of the godawful U2 song that when I first saw the movie had me rushing out of the stalls as it played over the credits.

The post-production history of Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time in America, based on a potboiler by Harry Grey, was even more troubled than that of Gangs of New York. The version that wowed the 1984 Cannes Festival was boiled down from eight hours of finished material, and butchered into a much shorter, linear story for the American market that sank like a stone. Now running at 220 minutes, Warner Brother's DVD release restores a couple of minutes to the British video version, and although there are rumours that Leone tried to release a definitive cut some 250 minutes long, it's probably the nearest we'll get to a finished version of his masterpiece.

Set in three different periods that span fifty years, the story follows the fate four childhood friends who graduate from petty street crime in early twentieth century Brooklyn to Prohibition-Era bootlegging, jewel heists, and trade union corruption, focussing in particular on Noodles (a brooding, watchful Robert De Niro), who begins to loathe the life in which he's allowed himself to become trapped because he fatally lacks the ambition and application to escape it. When his friend, the cruel, quick-witted and possibly crazy Max (James Woods, more convincing in his offhand belief of his own brilliance than his flashes of murderous rage), reveals a suicidal scheme to rob the Federal Reserve, Noodles decides to betray Max and his other friends while they're engaged on a minor bit of bootlegging. He expects to go down with them for a short prison sentence, but Max refuses to allow him to come along, and when Noodles' friends are ambushed and cut down by the police, he must flee New York. Years later, in 1968, a mysterious message brings him back to Brooklyn, where he learns that one of his friends survived the ambush, has grown powerful, and wants a final favour.

Leone deepens this straightforward gangster story by skilfully intermingling the three parts of the story, opening with a brutal gang's search for Noodles, jumping forward to 1968, when he returns to his old neighbourhood, and weaving back and forth between childhood, middle years, and old age to build a powerful sense of regret at lives lost, wasted, or corrupted. While Gangs of New York idealises and simplifies its gangster hero, Leone doesn't shrink from portraying his gangsters as amoral brutes, but also shows us what they were before they fell, and lets us understand that Noodles' tragedy is not simply that he knows what he has become, but that he also knows what he could have been. Our sympathy is won early on, in the detailed scenes portraying the gangsters' childhood on the streets in Brooklyn's Jewish quarter, is sustained through their Prohibition-Era exploits (an uneasy mixture of brutality and slapstick), and undercut when we realize that Noodles betrayed his friends to save them from themselves in the aftermath of a sojourn with his former childhood sweetheart, whom he raped in a jealous fury after learning that she was leaving to further her career in Hollywood. Unfolding in languorous shots sustained by Ennio Morricone's lush, romantic score (written before the movie was lensed), this long movie ends more or less where it began, in the opium den to which Noodles retreats after witnessing the gunshot and burnt bodies of his friends, culminating in a final shot, frozen under credits, of his blissful smile. Some critics have used this final shot to argue, with little other evidence, that the 1968 section of the story is an opium-induced precognitive fantasy of guilt-purging wish-fulfilment, but it's hard to explain how a 1930's gangster could foresee, say, the Beatles and frisbees, and it's more likely that the famous freeze-frame lets us take leave of Noodles in the only moment of blissful freedom he's allowed.

Leone's last movie is not without its problems. The mix of slapstick, violence and sentiment is sometimes ill-judged, his portrayal of women as either whores or cock-teasers attracted accusations of misogyny, and the rape of Noodle's childhood sweetheart, Deborah (Elizabeth McGovern), may be necessary to show how the depth of his corruption, but it's excruciatingly extended, leaving one sorry not for the character, but for the actress. Nevertheless, Once Upon A Time In America is a powerful and fully wrought achievement, brilliantly reimagining the tropes of gangster movies, and suffusing them with an aching sense of desolation. The brand new digital transfer, perfect apart from a few stray speckles, reveals a wealth of detail in the deep shadows of its sombre palette. Like Gangs of New York, this long movie is divided between two discs; extras include trailers, a photo gallery, an excerpt from a documentary profile on Leone, and a marathon commentary by critic Richard Schnickel that mixes much information and insight with unnecessary and chucklingly avuncular description of the unfolding action.

First appeared in Crime Time 35.

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