Critical Essays and Analyses

Extract from Once Upon a Time In America by Adrian Martin. A book in the British Film Institute's series on modern classics. This chapter focuses on the theme of betrayal. (PDF)

Review of the book by Bill Krohn (External link)

'Maximising the Noodles: Class, Memory, and Capital in Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In America' by Richard Godden. This article from Journal of American Studies (1997) gives an interpretation of the film as an allegory for the history of capitalism in America. (PDF)

'Once Upon A Time In America' by Dana Knowles. A lengthy critical essay from AboutFilm.com (External link)

'Once Upon A Time In America' by Rob Edelman and Audrey E. Kupferberg. An interpretation from film-reference.com which focuses on how the characters can "can never really escape their roots." Also contains an extensive bibliography of books and articles. (External link)

'It Came From the Mystic' by Carloss James Chamberlin. This article from 'Senses of Cinema' discusses the Clint Eastwood film Mystic River, but argues that it must be interpreted with reference to Once Upon A Time In America. (External link)

Scripts, Factual Essays, etc.

Dialogue transcript: Drew's Script-O-Rama (External link). Just the dialogue, no description, and does not say which character is saying what. Here's another script which attributes dialogue to characters, but contains no desciption of scenery or action: PDF TXT

Sergio Leone meets Noodles While in New York in 1968, Leone met with Harry Grey, author of The Hoods. Here is the account of the meeting given by Christopher Frayling in his biography Sergio Leone: Something to do with Death. (PDF)

Wikipedia article. Discusses differences between the film and the source-novel, unfilmed and deleted scenes, and alternative versions. (PDF)

'How 85 Minutes Disappeared, Once Upon a Time' by Alex Abramovich. An article from the New York Times, June 8, 2003, on the occasion of the film's release on DVD. The article mainly discusses the way the film was cut by the studio in its initial U.S. theatrical release, and contains an interview with James Woods. (PDF)

Soundtrack liner notes by Jon Burlingame. From the 1998 re-release of the soundtrack on Rykodisc CD . (PDF)

Locations by Malcolm Barber (PDF). A list of which scenes were filmed where. The same information, along with photos of the locations, can be found here.

Questions and Answers by Malcolm Barber (PDF). Explains some of the puzzles of the plot. The original article can be found here.

An inexpensive ebook of 'The Hoods' by Harry Grey is available from Mobipocket here.