Once Upon a Time in America: Extended Director’s Cut

Dir. Sergio Leone. 1984/2012, 251 mins., plus intermission. DCP. With Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern. Sergio Leone’s ten-years-in-the-making opus does for the gangster film what his visionary spaghetti westerns did for the horse opera, brilliantly reimagining the genre as a vehicle for limitless stylistic expression. Magnificently recreating the look and feel of Prohibition-era New York City, and bolstered by an unforgettable Ennio Morricone score, it chronicles five decades in the life of De Niro’s David “Noodles” Aaronson, who goes from Lower East Side slum kid to bootlegging mobster to old man reflecting on his criminal past. Leone’s coup is an intricate flashback structure which lends this epic rise-and-fall saga a hauntingly elegiac undercurrent. Though the film was originally released in the U.S. in a severely truncated version panned by critics, the full version, presented here, is one of the great American masterpieces.

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. Review safety protocols before your visit.