Film
Once Upon a Time in America
Sergio Leone's last film is a gangster epic told through opium-fogged memory, jumping between a boy's Lower East Side childhood and the broken old man he becomes. It's slow, mournful, gorgeously shot, scored by Morricone at his most aching. This is for patient viewers who want a crime saga that behaves like a novel, not a thriller — grief and betrayal matter more than plot.
If you liked this
The Godfather Part II1974
The other great dual-timeline gangster epic, weaving a rise and a fall across generations with the same tragic patience Leone brings to Noodles' story.
But Its cool, controlled classicism is almost the opposite of Leone's fevered, dreamlike sprawl.

GoodFellas1990
Faster, funnier, and just as damning about the mob mythology this film takes so seriously — a bracing companion piece in a very different key.
But The kinetic energy and voiceover swagger are a world away from Once Upon a Time in America's dirge-like tempo.

The Godfather1972
If you want the foundational text this whole genre keeps rewriting, this is where the operatic gangster picture was perfected.
But You've probably already seen it, and it offers little of Leone's fractured, memory-haunted structure.

The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
The Roaring Twenties1939
It's the direct ancestor: same rise-fall-regret arc, same doomed friendship, same mourning for a vanished city — just forty-five years and one aspect ratio earlier.
James Cagney's WWI veteran rises and falls through Prohibition bootlegging in the film that essentially invented this genre's elegiac shape decades before Leone got there.
But Studio-era pacing and black-and-white frankness feel a long way from Leone's lush, dreamlike excess.

More like this (8)
Boardwalk Empire2010
Same Prohibition-era New York underworld, stretched into a five-season novel with the room to let ambition curdle slowly.
But It's a long commitment, and its polish sometimes trades away the grimy, hallucinatory quality Leone's film has.

Miller's Crossing1990
The Coens' tightly wound, beautifully shot gangster picture treats loyalty and betrayal with the same weary formality as Noodles' world.
But It's brisk and plot-driven where this film luxuriates in mood — a very different rhythm.

The Irishman2019
Scorsese's own late-career meditation on time, regret, and outliving your own myth — the closest modern equivalent to Leone's elegiac tone.
But Three and a half hours of digitally de-aged faces and slow accounting for a life is a big ask.

A Bronx Tale1993
A smaller, warmer coming-of-age story about a boy pulled toward the neighbourhood gangster's orbit — the same seduction, without the scale.
But It's sentimental where Leone is bleak, and lacks any of the historical sweep.

Carlito's Way1993
A former gangster trying to escape his own past, narrated with the same doomed, valedictory sadness that hangs over Noodles from the start.
But De Palma's stylistic flourishes are showier and more genre-pulpy than Leone's classical restraint.

Road to Perdition2002
A quieter, more contained Prohibition-era tragedy about fathers, sons, and violence passed down — handsome, sad, and unhurried.
But It's tidy and restrained where this film is sprawling and messy, with a fraction of the ambition.

Waltz with Bashir2008
Same structural idea as Leone's film — memory as an unreliable, opium-thick fog you have to walk back through to understand who you became.
An animated documentary in which a filmmaker excavates his own buried memories of war, using rotoscoped dreamscapes to get at truths straight narration couldn't reach.
But It's about the Lebanon War, not gangsters, and the animation style takes some adjusting to.

A Brighter Summer Day1991no page yet
Same genre engine — the gangster coming-of-age epic — relocated to another country and another register, quieter and even more devastating about how boyhood curdles into ruin.
A four-hour Taiwanese epic about teenage gangs, family, and violence in 1960s Taipei, shot with the same patient, novelistic sprawl and aching sense of lost innocence.
But It's in Mandarin, nearly as long, and even less interested in plot momentum than Leone's film.
People
Cast
Robert De NiroNoodles
James WoodsMax
Elizabeth McGovernDeborah
Joe PesciFrankie
Burt YoungJoe
Tuesday WeldCarol
Treat WilliamsJimmy O'Donnell
Danny AielloPolice Chief Aiello
Richard BrightChicken Joe
James HaydenPatsy
William ForsytheCockeye
Directing
- Amy WellsAssistant Director
- Dennis T. BenatarAssistant Director
- Luca MorsellaAssistant Director
- Philippe LandoulsiAssistant Director
- Sergio LeoneDirector
- Fabrizio Sergenti CastellaniFirst Assistant Director
Writing
- Harry GreyNovel
- Enrico MedioliScreenplay
- Franco ArcalliScreenplay
- Franco FerriniScreenplay
- Leonardo BenvenutiScreenplay
- Piero De BernardiScreenplay
- Sergio LeoneScreenplay
Production
- Diana Di MicheleAccountant
- Dominique BruballaAccountant
- Fausto CapozziAccountant
- Lucie DroletAccountant
- Sergio RosaAccountant
- Cis CormanCasting
- Joy ToddCasting
- Robert BenmussaConsulting Producer
- Fred C. CarusoExecutive In Charge Of Production
- Claudio ManciniExecutive Producer
- Flo GallantExtras Casting
- Sylvie BourqueExtras Casting
- David BaileyExtras Casting Assistant
- Attilio VitiLocation Manager
- Pierre LabergeLocation Manager
- Robert RothbardLocation Manager
- Arnon MilchanProducer
- Antonio PalombiProduction Assistant
- Eric P. StecklerProduction Assistant
- Maurizio CusanoProduction Assistant
- Pietro SassaroliProduction Assistant
- Reuben GonzalezProduction Assistant
- Simona PatitucciProduction Assistant
- Danièle RohrbachProduction Coordinator
- Gail KearnsProduction Coordinator
- Ginette HardyProduction Manager
- Francesca AlatriProduction Secretary
- Jennifer W. ShoreProduction Secretary
- Mario CotoneProduction Supervisor
- Walter MassiUnit Manager
Recommended by
The Godfather Part II, Casino, Boardwalk Empire, Gangs of New York, Miller's Crossing, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Road to Perdition, The Deer Hunter, Carlito's Way, A Bronx Tale, Our Friends in the North, The Irishman, The Roaring Twenties, Scarface, Underworld