35 plus years ago when I saw this movie I saw the part was James woods shot his self in the head and fell into the garbage truck and he got ate up by the Blades . I’m 100% positive that was on the movie I Seen.
I saw this movie for the first time on Netflix maybe a year or so ago. Good flick I was hooked from the first 10 minutes I think he just threw himself in the the garbage truck
The fact that noodles never heard of senator bailey or seen an image of him on the news or newspapers to recognize that it was max all along, adds even more weight to the dream theory imo .
@@daveyboy_ what I mean is that he never seen a picture of him on the tv or in the newspapers also how did fat moe not know that his sister was with max?
I'm definitely in the opium dream camp. The way the story was set up with the opium den starting and ending the film, plus the fact that Deborah didn't seem to age much while Noodles and Max were noticeably aged, says to me that this was deliberate to indicate Noodles is still imagining Deborah as she is in the 1930s due to his attachment to her. Noodles was responsible for the deaths of his friends and this vision was a way to cope with that and make himself out to be a victim to Max rather than own up to his mistakes.
spot on. To add to that Max used to fake death when he was a kid. So Noodles wanted to believe max is faking his death again. Last garbage truck scene was another instance of it. Noodles thinking did max again fake his death
@@chrissy2590 He faked his own death again, the feet under the truck can not be explained away as a mistake, like it was in this video... Sergio Leonne was very deliberate with detail, and that was no mistake.
I just realized something about Deborah. After the “Cleopatra” scene, Deborah is seen with some of her white make up on. And in the beginning seen where Noodles sees her - there flour in the air. It’s definitely a dream.
I can't imagine how confusing the original edit must have been for audiences or how upsetting it must been for everyone involved to see a masterpiece butchered.
The problem with it being an opiatic nightmare is this-there is a scene where he goes to the locker to fetch the money and there is a frisbee in the scene,how can he imagine a fad”frisbee would be created.or that TVs would be popular in bars,or style of rent a car be dreamed in 1933?
Yeah, Unless there's a 10 hour Leone cut out there. Where Noodles is doing DMT and shrooms with Mike Tyson, before getting time traveled back into the future with Doc Brown to help Middle earth fight the Rings of Power . Then that theory is a fluke, Opium isn't that helluva drug lol. Especially to dream about the future of NYC in great detail. That's God level omniscience, even for a petty gangster 😂.
@@dillonwalshpvd The movie was horrible, so horrible it was regarded as the worst movie ever, so you can argue it was good at being bad, not just that it was the best at being bad, which could therefore mean it's a masterpiece at being horrendous
yes dillon is mocking someone's loose definiton of "masterpiece". if using that loose definition, it equally applies to The Room. of course The Room is infamous and not a masterpiece. so OP's definition isn't very accurate. @@V---L
Many things are explained by the idea of an opium dream sequence, some that stick out to me are: 1) The phone ringing while having detailed thoughts is the first sign of it, the ringing being the reminder of what you are seeing is really over lapped by the reality where he really is. 2) The assisted back door escape from the opium house. How could someone in a drugged opium state just walk out of that house and begin their sequence that lead to him going to Buffalo? 3) The lack of utter surprise seeing Noodles after 35 years from each character. It's more of a casual, hey where ya been? And of course the line, what have you been doing? "Going to bed early". A feeling of opium induced dreaming is more of a better description. 4) The mausoleum scene is one of the biggest mysteries explain by a dream sequence. That would be the perfect thought in his head for his 3 dear friends to all be together in this huge beautiful mausoleum, with no real description of how it was commissioned.
2- I don't think is very important, the travel to Buffalo could of been in separate days and him leaving could of happen with the help of the Asian ppl, is somewhat incongruent but I personally don't think is as relevant 3-Noodles doesn't mind, he just accept it, he can't do anything and in a way he refuses to call him Max, as he never refers to him as such, Noodles also got time to think about it before hand and he is too old to even care 4- Max himself did it, he find their graves to say his goodbye and it was made by Max, which is why the key for the money is there
What if Noodles was high and the reality was the people looking for him would catch up to him in a few. He was high as you said the phone was ringing to get him to pick up and get a warning but the Chinese people did not let him answer only wanted him to relax. I think your theory is right with Deborah especially her reaction was off to me and she still looked super young. Also no one is pointing out they beat up Moe super bad and he didn’t have a scratch on him in the future you can heal of course 35 years later but how bad they beat him something should’ve resonated to me
Two facts I do know. Firstly, the scene was something of a reference to a real event, where some politician or businessman (can't remember who exactly, Jimmy Hoffa!?) disappeared, and on the day it happened a garbage truck was mysteriously parked outside his home all day. Secondly, the actor who we see standing there is not James Woods - it was in fact a crew member or something. Sorry these facts are a bit shady, they're just from memory. I'm sure someone can give full details though. Personally, I reckon since Senator Bailey/Max asked Noodles to kill him, his suicide does make sense. But yeah I do think it was left deliberately ambiguous - hence not using James Woods. We also don't know whether he jumped in the back to kill himself, or maybe just got in the passenger door to escape. In real terms I suppose it actually makes more sense if he got in the passenger door - after all throwing yourself into into that grinding mechanism seems like a pointlessly painful way of committing suicide, whereas sneaking off in a garbage truck seems like a pretty conspicuous way of disappearing. But this is a film, and symbolism is far more important than logic - and a man killing himself by jumping in the back of a garbage truck is pretty meaningful. There's also some symbolic significance in the way the headlights change and suddenly there's a car full of partying youngsters coming the other way - kind of an out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new thing. I'd say this is by far the most surreal scene in the whole film.
@Tusc9969 I'm glad someone wrote about the escape possibility (it may have, hm, escaped me, but is it even mentioned in the video here?) Also, what i'm not finding in the first few comments i've just scrolled, is that Max going into clandestinity, albeit rather old, is a sort of simmetry/karma/retribution to what Noddles had to undergo. Btw, i haven't looked for the joe pesci cameo in the hospital (when the union man is recovering from the shot)... and whether he actually had agreed with Max to take out the Detroit diamond man (back then - or was it hinted/shown, in those scenes) or this is a comeback of revenge, or doesn't care anymore, because times have changed and they're into an altogether different business. I've just watched the extended cut on tv in Italy, it's good it does raise doubts and questions and food for thought. However, call me simplistic or worse (fine :D) but it all sounds bit too brainy and complicated... i can tell you, i've done literature studies and stuff, love cinema, did watch most or all Leone's works, just saying i'm nerdy enough to appreciate even heavy bits i guess! But this movie here, just sounds a bit too built-up in the plot. Or yeah, made more sense as the original idea of 2 parts or, i'd say, an actual series, yeah. These are all really just questions, thank you :)
The fact that we don't know what happened gives the film a kind of immortality...no matter how many times you watch it the question will never be answered...and so the film never really ends...maybe that's its brilliance...
Definitely. It's like why a David Lynch film, that didn't make much sense to myself upon first viewing, will still stick in my mind way longer than a linear plotted movie
I just watched this film yesterday(… 🎶) and I think there’s an interesting parallel to the garbage truck scene and the scene where Max and Noodles first meet. In this scene, Noodles was trying to “roll a drunk” unseen, behind the cover of an oncoming wagon but was thwarted by Max. In the end, Noodles thwarts Max’s plans of how things should end and Max disappears himself behind the oncoming garbage truck.
I saw it as Max was in trouble with the wrong people. He had a working relationship with the Unions and the Mafia. He knew his time was up and he wanted Noodles to do it. But when Noodles didn't, Max was "cleaned up".
There isn’t much I wouldn’t do to see the full version of the movie as intended by Leone. This film just feels frustrating because although it is great, it could have been so much more.
So, from what I hear most of the footage is not retrievable. If the studio agreed to Leone’s original 2 movies at 3-hours each then ya, we’d see a lot more scenes. But we’ll never see all the footage he wanted to use for the ‘6 hour’ presentation. Same kind of deal with Kubrick’s ‘eyes wide shut’
@@MrOctober44 Don’t take it all so seriously it’s just a way of speaking. I wouldn’t do any of that I’m not crazy. I’d just really like to see the movie the way Leone wanted it to be seen.
@@LucLB01 lol he just doesn’t understand something called ‘a figure of speech’ He was trying to be clever but ended up just looking like a goof, hahaha.
Did he or did he not. That is the question, and many thanks for covering this topic. Once Upon A Time In America was a masterpiece, and the ending was spectacular.
@louisfrost4975 So why don't you enlighten us all with some title of "non-pile of vomit" movies of mob genre wich you usually make the comparison with?
@@louisfrost4975Do you know that the director of this "pile of vomit" was offered the direction of "The Godfather" earlier than Coppola? And that he refused because he was already busy with the project of this film, on which he worked for the next twelve years? I understand and don't discuss personal tastes, no film should please everyone and in fact I also don't like many critically acclaimed films; but that doesn't mean I can't recognize their objective value or I'll start insulting them. In particular, insulting this is just making you ridiculous.
Opium dream theory has some holes in it too. His dream accurately envisions modern cars of the 60s, though he is having the dream in the mid/early 30s. He also is reflecting to the song "Yesterday" released in 1965. Wouldn't his dream of the 60's still reflect his knowledge of the 30s, rather than actually being set in an accurate 60's?
Realistically, if you wanted to film it as an opium dream and make the spectator only find it at the end, how else would you do it? Some futuristic version of 30s would make it obvious right from the beginning, not to mention that sci-fi looks would totally spoil its atmosphere.
I’m 99% sure it’s a dream but there’s something that doesn’t add up. Who took the money? If Max actually died who knew about the money and took it? I wish we could see the 9 hour version
what money ?? you see the briefcase just at the beginning ,when they were kids... do you really believe that max and the others having a famous pub still have their money in a briefcase at the train station??? that's part of the dream.
Noodles was a gangster, not someone who worked on Tin Pan Alley, but perhaps he should have as his "opium dream" produces a muzak early version of the Beatles "Yesterday"- I'm assuming the lyrics which are not present in the dream were also written by Noodles as their sentiment so accurately reflects his state of mind. Anyone care to explain how that "airport song" got into the dream- Leone could just as easily have used a twenties era song like, say, "All Alone". Perhaps it's just a massive oversight, along with the foresight Noodles shows in reimagining automobiles, escalators, etc.
@@xpindy he's not going to make it obvious, or people wouldn't be so surprised and they can still have their own interpretation anyway. It's art I suppose. Noodles fails in his pursuit of the American dream (get rich, marry your childhood sweetheart), so has a pipe dream about being the victim of a great betrayal instead, in this interpretation. That happened to be shared by Sergio Leone himself though. ' For me, Noodles didn't leave the 1930s. He just dreamed about his future, in an opium hallucination '- Sergio Leone. Perhaps the Bruce Willis character in Six Sense should have floated around in a white robe then maybe? “The peculiarity of opium is a drug that makes you imagine the future as the past. Opium creates visions of the future. Other drugs only make you see the past' , Sergio Leone.
You ignore two things. While Noodles watches the Garbage Truck - there’s an Asian house clearly behind Noodles. Also, after the Garbage truck goes by, three 1930’s cars drive by in the other direction. With people in the cars wearing 1930’s garb, celebrating - with God Bless America playing. It’s just like the Prohibition Party that opens the film. ….It’s a dream.
Another point in support of the opium dream theory is that Max's son looks exactly like young Max... I know they used the same actor to drive home the point that Max survived and had a child, but it's a bit too on the nose
The author of this analysis is correct. I have been personally ripped apart by a dump truck several times and can confirm that it’s an awfully painful way to die.
The opium dream does not hold up. Noodles dreamed what a 1964 Lincoln Continental looked like, dreamed television sets and all other items of modern society? Nooo, I don't think so. The point of the ending is this: Noodles is the only one who has come to peace with himself. Deborah has become a mediocre actress and a kept woman. No husband or real family of her own. Max has lived his life as a hood, always looking over his shoulder until it finally closed in on him. Noodles is the man at peace, who stopped "Living with a gun in his hand". Max was being watched and after Noodles told him to shove off and left, was killed by a hit man who got in the waiting garbage truck which was his getaway. This truck leaving exposing the rotating trash signifies that they were all trash.
I have my own theory. On two seperate occasions earlier in the film Noodles kills men involving machinery. There's the scene where he starts up the elevator as a ruse and then shoots the guy in the back of the head, and then there's the scene where a guy tried to hide in the pillow factory and Noodles turns off the thing blowing the feathers, revealing the man and then shooting him. Thus, Max appearing at the end next to the garbage truck implies that Noodles did indeed kill him in the 30's and that this vision of him as an old man is just an opium dream.
I think its just as likely Max just got in the passenger side of the truck, he's the master of faking his death. If he gave Noodles $1,million For him to do the hit, you know he had a couple of million to start a new life somewhere else.
Nah, max could see that noodles come to terms with max death a long time ago, the max who noodles loved and lost died with patsy and cockeye. Noodles always loved Deborah, but he knew Deborah would never forgive him.. it was enough for him to know that Deborah made the right choice by leaving him to pursue her acting career.
in a deleted scene when the elderly noodles is walking around the neighbourhood there is an old building being torn down and the workers are throwing debris in to a shredder and noodles is mesmorized looking in to it. it mirrors the dump truck's shredder plus there is asian writing on the dump truck which is a nod to the opium den where noodle's inagination is concocting the entire story.
Noodle is a crime boss still. He knows about Max new identity all along. He has'nt seen Max, Deborah etc for all these years yeah, but he knows roughly their whereabouts. The garbage truck team is Noodle's own and yeah, he kills Max. Max wanted out by gunning, Noodle gave him a crushing in the back of the truck.
Chapter 9 in the Book, The Hoods '' { Basis for the Movie } Starts of with a dream - Maybe this is where Leone got the Dream Theory from ? - He uses Pseudonym's for Prohibition Gangsters such as Joe Adonis, Frank Costello , Dutch Schultz, Owney Madden , Lucky Luciano and more , - In this dream also sees Delores Dancing AKA Deborah and she is calling to him - Is this the Ballerina scene he sees when hiding in the Bathroom in the movie ?? - Would love to see the 2 X 3 hour Pictutes - There was 10 hours of footage done- This is probably uncovered somewhere in his Daughters possession ?
Definitely a dream sequence. Leone and company knew they were being surreal to imply it's a dream. It adds an endless amount of possible discussions and debates over the meaning of every scene of the film.
Then explain how Noodles, being able to visualize cars, fashion and culture of the future, when he have never seen it, the mind can't visualize what have never been seen. If anything, people back then had a totally different view on where society would look like in the future, similar to how we do that today based on current trends. Hence for it to be a dream, the mind has to visualize familiarity, we would have seen a different world.
The garbage truck is real - at this point in the narrative, Noodles has woken up and has been found by the assassins. He's still intoxicated enough so that he's still partly in the dream, but also returning to the 1930s. The door he walks out of isnt at Bailey's house, but at the opium den. That isn’t Max or 1 of his men, but 1 of the gangsters looking for Noodles. The 1930s car signals that Noodles has "returned" to his time, and it's his body that ends up in the garbage truck.
I think it was like the scene where they fell into the water , cus if you look underneath the Garbage truck when it's driving , you see Max running up to the side of it . And if he did jump in the back that would be messy .
this film is great, something like the sopranos or Goodfellas you still like the mobsters no matter how depraved they get, but this film shows how ugly it really is and doesn't make it look attractive at all
4 other members of their gang. You forgot Dominic. Who's murder by Buggsy, was avenged by Noodles. Then Noodles got pinched for stabbing a cop in the same incident. This is very important for the Noodles character arc. Which was brought to the audience's attention later on in the film when Noodles mentioned Domimnic's last words "I slipped ".
I watched for the first time too by my father's indication. He watched when it was at the cinema in the 80s, we have completely different views about the movie. For example: he thinks Deborah was a cheater and manipulated Noodles since the beggning and i think she liked him but choose to persue her career. Most of all the movie gave me more questions than answers😂
@@purplepink139 I feel the same way about her. She knew it was noodles that she was with but she saw/assumed the influence that Max had over the group and positioned herself to align with Max.
Look at the garbage truck. There is standing 35 on it. Its 35 years between Noodles ran off in 1933 to 1968. Thats not a coincidence. So the truck represents something, like 35 years of noodles life.
There's also the multiple drawn out rape scenes that make you disgusted by the characters doing them but the movie just brushes them off like nothing major happened...
I am glad you guys liked this movie so much, the music and casting (how beautiful was young Jennifer Connelly and how great of an actor was Scott Tyler who played young Noodles!) was amazing but I was terribly disappointed. Never once in his life does Noodles make an actual decision. Like young Deborah says, he's just a two-bit punk who follows his mommy (Max) around like he's a little boy without the power to make his own decisions. He never fully decides to commit to Max and his schemes and he never fully decides to pursue Deborah and do what is necessary to be worthy of her. So, in the end, he loses both of them and his life is one big regret. I am trying to think of any character in this movie who ends up happy and content with their life, and I'm coming up short.......?...... I agree with the presenter of this movie that whether or not Max kills himself in the end is completely irrelevant. The story itself dies of its own inadequacies. I think the movie could have been partially salvaged if Noodles had taken his million dollars and spent the rest of his life making things up to Deborah, but of course, that doesn't happen............ Again, like Deborah said, "he will never be my beloved, what a shame." The smartest person in the entire movie was a twelve year old girl!
I always believed Max went into that garbage truck, though I was very young, and tended to take things at face value when I first watch this movie. If I were to rethink it, see it more as he played his final visual trick, and made you think he magically disappeared, perhaps getting crushed. Because it does seem choreographed a little too well.
I'm not terribly fussed to figure out details like this. I view the film from a thematic perspective. It's a tale of wasted lives. The young fellows were driven by insatiable need for power and wealth, but succeeded in merely wasting their lives.
When discussing this I have a clear memory of that there WAS one or two traces of blood (or somethng else that was red in color)shown after the truck, in the movie-after that the sound from the truck also had suddeny changed. My impression has been that probably the script writer wanted it to look like Max jumped in. Does anyone more than I remember the rather thin red trace on the road? It was a long time since I saw the movie, but Istill recall this detail.
I have met Elizabeth McGovern ( Robert De Niro's love interest) a few times and I found her to be very down to earth. She lives in West London and I was surprised at finding out how big she was in the 80s. She has since appeared in Downton Abbey, a British TV series.
I never bought into the Opium theory mostly because there is no way Noodles can dream up the peace sign, hippies, black leather jackets, and 1960s cars. I think this theory would hold weight if you saw 1930s cars in the 60s throughout the sequence. Also a 1960s song plays in the sequence, that is just virtually impossible to predict. I do think however, the last scene might be a dream Old Noodles is having at that moment, and that the past is more so a stream of nightmarish memories that haunt him.
My take on it is that the garbage truck is symbolic - removing the trash. The "Once upon a time" format is indeed a fairy tale, however, fairy tales act as camouflage for what is really going on in Life. I'm not sure the whole film is an opium hallucination; if it was, why didn't the film open with Noodles in the opium den and proceed from there? I think it is relating the story of early organized crime in America, with characters representing real-life characters that we all know. The opium den scene, I think, is Noodles escaping from the bitter mistakes he made in his life, on different levels. Conventional wisdom is that he Gentiles tend to get drunk, while the Jews lean more on drugs as an escape mechanism; opium is also more cerebral, which Jews are perceived to be as well. The older Noodles was still living in a time where Politicians tended to be well-known locally, as opposed to nationally, so it would make sense that he didn't know Bailey, or ever see a photo of him. Even if he did, he could have simply wrote it off as a look alike of Max, since Max was confirmed to have been burned up beyond recognition; and official accounts still carried weight back then. I think I saw an extended version of the movie years ago, but I don't believe it was the 4 hour one. I would have liked to see more of Jimmy O'Donnell and the relationship formed between the Gangsters and the Union; that piece is interesting, especially since Unionism is often portrayed politically as Collectivism, while Gangsterism is collaterally portrayed as Capitalism writ large.
After the switching of the babies the political guy says you have take out old garbage in front of Noodles, when they were popping champagne. I had a feeling Max's ambition started there..
And what about the scene where they drive off the pier and the boys are in the water screaming out for Noodles who doesn't appear (the way Max did when they were kids on the boat) but then it cuts to the 1968 garbage truck grinding away outside the gate in the day time?
Without Leonne's proper cut of two films both six hours in length, we shall never know. I am trying to find a copy of the book it is based on to understand more of the subplots. I think after the success of Peaky Blinders we could do with a reimagining of the story over a 12 part TV series.
@@bri7757 not a 12 hour movie. Originally Leone intended to make a 6-hour cut and release it in two 3-hour parts like the movie Novecento, but the studio didn't want that and ended up releasing the 3h40m cut
One thing that is puzzling. Assuming it isnt a dream, who put up the monument( that a taxi driver takes noodles to in 1968 en route to the neighbourhood. ) to the three who died at the bank heist. It says that it was erected by Noodles but he fled NY in a hurry , being hunted by killers so he wouldnt have had time to do this . My guess is Max paid for it to be done
The time Noodles is watching the television with fat Moe, where Sec Bailey's assassination attempt was part of the news, Bailey looked nothing like Max. So, that's where the conundrum lies. Bailey wasnt Max. The latter part that followed was probably an imagined series of events, in some drug-addled stupor, leading Noodles to redeem himself of his guilt of having had Max killed, inadvertently, and despite the grim provocations by Max, not killing him. Saying "that is the way i see things" AND adding his view of the story where he says he was trying to save Max from himself but it ended up getting Max killed. As he walks out and away, the garbage truck is a metaphor for all that is left of something beautiful that perishes with time. Consumed by betrayal, lust, greed, and lies. The whirring blades keep spinning and fade into the story repeating itself. Friends in a car passing by, laughing, chucking a bottle - not caring which stranger it may hurt. Max is back again at the opium den - younger. And chuckles at the irony and his ability to repair the part of him that hurt.
Whichever way you look at the film's plot, both the real or the dream scenarios are masterfully done with the footage used in the proper form. In a rather large nutshell the easy plot line is that the film is about a guy who loved his gang (and the people he grew up with) so much that he was willing to do anything to help protect them and every time that a tragedy befell his gang (death of a member or Debora's leaving) and he just couldn't deal with the reality, he would turn to the opium den for escape. At the end of the 3 plus hour cut you see Noodles looking back (after what he assumes is Max's suicide) upon the night he originally thought Max and gang were gunned down. A beautiful scene to be sure but what if it were a dream for the reasons that have been mentioned in many talks about Sergio's gremlin-type, tounge in cheek way of dealing with his overly enthusiastic aduiences? That can be fun too. There were quite a few cuts of this film that had basterdized the ideas and ended up making the film even more confusing. The original VHS American trimmed down cut adds one small but maybe important tidbit to the dream scenario. Let's say the opening scene is real where the boys from Detroit are hunting down Noodles. Noodles goes to the opium pagoda and gets high to dream a happier ending to his life so far as his brain twists and turns what happened in the gang's life to fit a narrative he can come to terms with. The dream begins after he puffs up. The sounds of "God Bless America" are heard in the background for a bit and the dream is off and running. Move to the ending where Max runs out and jumps into the back of the garbage truck as it rides away. STOP. In the early American cut, as the truck pulls away we hear two gunshots and we see the usual back of the grinding gears and then a shot of Noodles watching as we also see, in the background a quick shot of a pagoda. (Opium den???) The truck's lights dissolve into a 30's post prohibition car coming the other way with "God Bless America" playing in the background. As Leone once said, "Maybe Noodles never got to leave the 1930's..." The gunshots make some sense but just how much sense, who really knows? Did this ending mean that as we see the pagoda and hear the shots and the song, Noodles life is drawing to a close because the boys from Detroit have found him? In that original (bad) cut the shots make perfect sense for the dream aspect but they never appeared again in any other cuts. Was it overlooked?
Max was walking behind the trash truck and then disappeared so he jumped in. He knew he was a dead man and was serious about Noodles whacking him. Maybe there wasn't blood on the compactor blades because they were cleaned off as they rotated against the rest of the garbage by the time Noodles looked in. Why go through all that trouble to bring Noodles back to kill him and not die and just left things as they were and he wouldn't have been the wiser after all that time. Max owed him the money and the deed. An Opium high could not go into the future with so much detail as if he was a future reading gypsy. while high. LOL!
So let me get this straight. The possibility that a guy on the back of the truck with a gun with a silencer, putting two in his doom and throwing him in the truck is ludicrous. But Noodles dreaming 2 hours or more of this 4 hour movie isn't? Ok! Seems to me like Noodles wasn't alone in those opium dens. 😊
Have you ever heard about watching your life flash before your eyes? That can be 90 years if you’re 90 when you die. He’s not dead but he’s on opium going through only 2 hours worth of information quickly.
I've seen this movie countless times.. I do believe noodles and the crew are from Brooklyn Williamsburg. Where a lot of Jews reside today. I'm from the Lower East Side and see a project building when Dominic died. And that was the Manhattan Bridge the were under. It's crazy how Debra had a kid with Max and was ashamed, even though Noodles tried to rpe her.. when you see her face upon entering she warned him, to keep they memory of his crew pure, instead on what he was about to see.. but messed up to say you can see the potential of betrayal from when Max moved to his hood. Dealing with the watch. But as I learned, as did Noodles, Love is blind. This movie is a great lesson in that.
Opium or no matter what drug you take, it will NOT allow you to know what's going to happen in the future. Noodles rented a car in the future from a car rental agent... how does Noodles know what cars will look like 30 years into the future, the car rental agent's uniform what his uniform would look, what the train station would look like in the future, or the digging-up of the graves when he returns back to NYC? People put a lot of emphasis on Noodle's opium trips. But I believe simply that he used opium to escape guilt, stress, and anxiety... and the opium did NOT allow him to make up an imaginary future The director's cut is non-linear allowing us to see three different times in Noodle's life... as a boy, in his late 20s/early 30s, and as a man in his 60s. Unlike the movie, "SLAUGHTER HOUSE 5" Noodles did not become unstuck in time and travel to different times in his life. It's just that the narrative divided up his life into three testaments of his life. NEW OPINION: I think Max possibly faked his death again. Why? I looked into the garbage truck and didn't see any red blood dripping or squirting. I think Max planned for the garbage truck to be there and rode on the side of the truck. I think he possibly hired the guy(s) driving the truck to help him escape to another state or country. Max KNEW other gangsters were bent on murdering him so he wouldn't testify in court. I also think Max worked it out with Frankie and his lawyer to do the Federal Reserve Bank job to kill Noodles, Cockeye, and Patsy. AND I wish we could see the original script because I think Joe Pesci's character probably had more of a larger part in the story. GREAT FILM!
I've always assumed (and don't consider myself nor the theory to be 'silly') that Bailey was assainated by the work crew per his prediction of his impending doom. I never heard these other theories but find the video thought provoking if unconvincing in making those alternative endings make sense for ME. to each their own. Good art is always open to interpretation.
PS, and believe it or not, again I speak from experience, they never made garbage trucks with weird twisty screws inside them. They've always actively compacted garbage with hydraulic rams. THAT was a prop truck made to look evil. I will admit I always thought Max shot himself and fell into the truck. Wasn't until now I noticed the screws.
Thanks, I think you have a point! ..'made to look evil' and with tinted windows in 1968!😅 I did a research on NY era garbage trucks pertaining to the 1960s after reading your comment here(and I've commented on this scene elsewhere in the past). I couldn't find any trucks with corkscrew waste grinder. However in the scene the overclean truck is seemingly poised to make it's rounds on the street but there is no garbage anywhere. Just a thought😉
He didnt jump in The people sent to kill him did. They arrived in a garbage truck and waited for him. People forget about the deck on the back of those trucks that two people ( the collectors ) ride on. He wanted Noodles to do it before they did. When Noodles refused, Max put on his coat walked out and waited patiently for the hit. They "collected" Max and tossed him in the compactor where he was crushed to death. Max didnt want to just vanish , or be remembered as a suicide ...both would be considered an admission of guilt. He wanted to be found murdered. He was sure that once Noodles found out how deeply he had been betrayed , he'd do it without hesitation. But Noodles gut instincts caused him to just walk away. The reason his old girl still looks young is because thats what he sees , he still loves her.
Cycles repeating themselves....Max knew Noodles would refuse. I wouldn't doubt that he set Noodles up again, and once AGAIN faked his own death. That smile at the end by Noodles though 😏. Genius ending, but HIGHLY perplexing. Great review and commentary 👍
The big give away was that he would see the girl, his one love, guilt ridden by their last "encounter", as the same age she was the last time he saw her face. When you think of past loves, you see them as they were, not as they are. It was certainly an opium induced dream. Not to mention that one could let themselves be ground up in a garbage truck without making any scream, or any blood showing on the blades.
You don't mention the car loads of partiers driving through after the dump truck leaves, appearing to be celebrating the end of prohibition? As you mention in the other video; it suggests this was all a dream; and, his 1930's mind is trying to pull him back to reality in the opium den? I also think the smile at the very end is simply Robert De Niro himself laughing at us while we are trying to figure all this out!
the ringing of the phone in the first scene of D'Niro drugged out, means the thugs catch up with him. In the end, it's not a new scene, it's the same scene revisited at the end (him drugged out smiling). D'Niro is smiling because he's imagining what might have taken place, but didn't because he soon dies when the thugs catch up with him. The reality is, the entire pack are killed because of his lame plan to get them busted and the rest of the movie after the smile point, was his imagined drugged out idea of what *could have been. It's his imagined happy ending. It's his drugged out way to deal with what happened and not to face his soon to come immanent death.
I think noodles might of wanted that to happen seeing max come out but he then snapped back to reality reason for max disappearing after the passing truck likely the mind altering substance was taking a toll on him and noodles at the end scene using the substance was a way of him coping with all the drama hes been through like as if max was haunting him
It was clear that Max did not throw himself into the garbage truck because the camera zooms in on the open backend of the truck and we see no body parts, not even blood. It's Sergio Leone being the magician showing: no, not in the garbage truck. Where did Max go children? For most of my life, I didn't like the dream scenario but it is actually the one that makes the most sense after all we are shown in the film. It doesn't change how much I love this film so for any viewer in doubt I say it's fine whichever scenario one chooses. It is but cinema.
Anybody who knows how those old garbage trucks operate would know that he didnt jump in the back of it, lol, to be slowly minced by that slow turning screw while being totally silent lol, there are no assassins in the garbage truck, he just hitched a ride and set in the cab to disappear again. Or just see what Woods says in interview about that scene, what happened to the character he plays,he disappeares behind the truck end scene, its not written in the script, but if you were 7 years old when you watched the movie you might have thought he jumped in the back you silly goose 😂
Reasons for why it was NOT a "all a dream" 1. "Third-person scenes". The movie opens with Eve being killed, Fat Moe being bitten up, and the mobsters looking for Noodles. In the extended version, there is a long dialogue between Max/secretary Bailey and Jimmy O'Donnell discussing the corruption scandal and signing papers. These scenes are shot from a 'third-person' perspective. They are not shown from Noodles' first-person's point of view, because Noodles was not there to witness them. Third-person scenes are our access point to objective reality and there is no way that Noodles could have dreamed those scenes. 2. Original plan of the movie. Sergio Leone shot something like 10 hours of footage. His original plan was to make two 3-hours movies, but the producers did not agree because they thought it was too risky box-office wise. Then Leone cut the movie down to a 4 hours run time, and then to a 3 and a half hour run time (also known as the 'European cut'). The producers cut it down to 2 and a half hour without Leone's permission (the 'US cut') and the end result was a disaster. In any case, there's no way that a story that was originally planned to be told in two 3-hours movies is "all a dream". 3. The meaning of the smile. Let's examine these two scenarios. Scenario 1. Noodles understands he has been tricked into believing in the death of Max, who in fact is hiding exactly like he did that time, long ago, when they were swimming. Noodles tragically smiles, because he understand that the joke is on him. Scenario 2. Noodles smokes opium and he has a drug-induced dream in which Eve (the only woman who loves him) is brutally killed, he is forced to leave New York, he then comes back decades later when he is poor and lonely, his only living old friend is also poor and lonely, he finds out that his best friend betrayed him, he is now with the woman he loves and they are both wealthy. Noodles smiles because... hold on, what would he have to smile about? It's a horrible nightmare, there's absolutely nothing to smile about. Yet that smile is the key. In Scenario 1, that smile in the very last moment of the film is very powerful: it shows us that Noodles knew everything all along, and decided not to believe in what he knew for 30+ years. In Scenario 2, that smile makes no sense. 4. Sergio Leone's cinematic philosophy. Leone was not telling 'small' or 'private' stories, in the sense of stories revolving just around individuals. Rather, he was using individual characters to tell the collective story of the US. He did so to 'de-construct' the 'American dream' conveyed by Hollywood movies. In this way, his cinematic philosophy was both a criticism to the Hollywood way of telling story and, at the same time, a sort of 'cultural and political criticism' to the back-then dominant ideal of the American dream. Instead of 'American heroes', Sergio Leone showed American 'anti-heroes'. He criticized the very 'origin story' of the US by making westerns (or 'spaghetti westerns') where white people are not heroes fighting against the wild native people: in Leone's movies, there are no native people left around anymore and white people are just killing each other. In Once upon a time in America, he went even more 'political'. The mobsters are integral part of US politics, and even people fighting for workers' rights (who are perceived to be the 'good people') are compromised with them. Mobsters even change their identities and become politicians themselves. In the end, however, all that 'rubbish' is trashed and forgotten, leaving people with the idea that the US are a perfect place, with young people drinking the once-forbidden alcohol can go on happily singing "America! America!" (that's exactly what happens after the party scene and the symbolism of that scene couldn't be clearer). This is the reality Leone wanted to talk about. If we stick we the dream interpretation, then the movie it's all about Noodles, his life, his traumas, his memories, his drug induced dreams. If we think that what we see is real, than the movie is about America. The title of the movie is Once upon a time in America, after all. 5. «But even Sergio Leone said that the dream interpretation is valid after all!». Yes, he said it is a valid interpretation, not that it is the RIGHT interpretation. On the other hand, he never said that the no-dream interpretation was wrong or even not valid. Beside, when Sergio Leone spoke about the dream interpretation, he was kind of half joking. of course he didn't want to spoil the ambiguity of the movie, that's why he would have never said "Oh no, that's the WRONG interpretation". Directors play that kind of tricks all the time: they know that providing right and definite answers would 'kill' the work of art, in a sense. Yet, the answers are all there to be seen: in the production history of the movie, in the scenes of the movie itself, in the coherent whole of Leone's cinematic philosophy.
You mixed up it a bit. The opening scene isn't in 60s, it is in 30s. Also last scene with Noodles smiling takes place in 30s, which is somehow mysterious.
@@KJKzK excuse me, but where did I say that the opening scene is in the '60? I know that the smiling takes place in the '30s and it is not mysterious, insofar as that scene from the '30s, shown at the end, gives a whole new meaning to what happened in the movie (we think Noodles didn't know the truth, the smiling scene let us know that he knew everything all along and decided not to believe to the truth).
@@vins1979 @vins_vins The dream theory assumes that that only events with old Noodles were a dream, and you mention Eve's dead is supposed to be proof that it wasn't a dream, that is why I pointed it out. There wasn't any Third-person scene in 60s in final movie. Also I am not convinced about "he knew everything" because Noodles was confused when he first time met Mr. Bailey, also scene when he talks to Deborah in 60s or Mausoleum scene proves otherwise.
@@KJKzK but there are third person scenes in the 60s. If you watch the final cut, you will see a rather long scene between Secretary Bailey (that is, Max) and Teamsters' union boss Jimmy O'Donnell. That scene is clearly and evidently third-person, since it's a private conversation between Max and Jimmy, at Max's home, and Noodles is not even in that home yet. Also, the movie begins with Eve being killed and Fat Moe being beaten up. Then it cuts to Noodles in the Chinese theatre. Then Noodles is on the run and he goes to Fat Moe... whom Noodles finds all tied up and beaten up. How could Noodles possibly dream what really happened to Fat Moe? (And we know that all the beating up really happened because it is shown in a third person scene.)
@@KJKzK Also, the scene at the Mausoleum proves nothing. The point is: in the '30s, Noodles realized that Max was not dead and that he fooled them all. But Noodles does not know that Mas is actually mr. Bailey, nor that he built the mausoleum, of course.
A bit of trivia from the circle one biography by Christopher frayling, the actor going into the garbage truck a guy who looked close to James woods, in an effort to confuse audiences about who it was
If you watch good,you can see foot running after the truck,like someone go with the truck and leave. Sorry if its not so clear,im french. So maybe max leave,or more probably it s just an error from Léone
I’m late but I like the concept of the dream theory and mainly that is because of Deborahs entire arch. He raped her that was the last time she seen him outside of the train scene and I do not believe she would even be that calm or allow him in her space alone like that even after those years. It worked out perfectly that she was with Max which makes no sense cause although they are similar in a lot of ways Deborah probably wouldn’t want anything to do with the men of her past especially so close to noodles. She always seemed like she was above it. Noodles and Max shared women the entirety of the movie butDeborah was off limits I can see in his subconscious him thinking Max was always in love with her that’s why they didn’t like each other and he would steal her as soon as he got the chance. She also was still young looking in the present day
I think that Max threw himself in there because he felt ashamed of what he had done - that he saw himself as garbage and thats where garbage belongs - in a garbage truck - but then again, if the whole thing was an opium dream, Noodles future and all of that, is it just Noodles’ mind trying to make sense of everything and trying to piece together the answer of who might have betrayed the gang, a way of trying to get closure for everything that he desperately sought with his trips the opium dens
13:20 thanks a lot to speak about that!!i thought i was alone to have seen that and i ve been so splitted about that.was it intentionaly from leone to let us think max leave with the truck??or it was just a mistake??i think it s a mistake,as you think,but it s still strange in my mind...Léone didnt see that?thats strange... Excuse my english im french. Thanks again for your video bro
What about the car which pass foward Noodles after the trash truck? All that people celebrating like prohibition ends, have no sense, I think this confirm that all that old noodles thing is just because the opioum.
Leone may not have had a logical ending, so he left the ending ambiguous - good for him. There's so much to latch on to that one can't fashion a constructed ending. When the boys still teens make their big cash gain, they put the satchel with the money in a safety-deposit box. Notice the safety-deposit boxes still stay the same for 30-40 years and are never upgraded ie key-to-combination lock etc. Fat Moe is given the key and they pledge not to open the safety-deposit box until all the members are together, probably not to give any one of them any 'big ideas' of running off with the money - after all friendship is one thing, money is another. Leone uses much intercutting of events to give time, place, circumstance mainly seen through Noodles's eyes. When the three members, Patsy, Cockeye & 'Max' are murdered in 1933, Moe and Noodles would be the only ones still left(Max actually survived). Noodles goes to open the safety-deposit box and the money was gone;(he must have got the key from Moe as they were the only ones of the gang left unless Max had an alternate key) So what happened to the money in 1933? Leone brings us to 1968 and Noodles returns to his old NY neighborhood after 35 years to an older Fat Moe who is barely making it in the old restaurant. Noodles had gotten clandestine instructions from an 'unknown' person to go to the old safety-deposit box and take the money, now mysteriously reappearing after missing in 1933(inflation would have defated it's value in 35 years though the 1933 notes would have still been legal). Noodles goes to see the 'unknown' benefactor after having visited his old girlfriend Deborah. Deborah introduces Noodles to the benefactor's son and he favors Max(now called Senator Bailey). Noodles puts it together that Max survived the ambush and the two meet and converse. Max has fathered a son, who looks exactly like the young Max, and is in a common law relationship with Deborah though it is not clear if Deborah is the boy's mother. Max achieving all that he's wanted criminally and politically, wants to destroy Noodles and in essence have Noodles destroy him.(Once again Leone is ambiguous, is Max dying or is the mob about to cut him down?) Max thought he had destroyed Noodles by taking his money and his lady love but alas in 35 years couldn't find him. Noodles had gotten a bus ticket and was living in Buffalo evidently pondering for 35 years where the money could have gone --Fat Moe asks him what has he been doing for all these years, Noodles responds saying going to bed early. Max lives in a fancy mansion residence and proceeds with the reachout to Noodles who comes to the mansion. They converse about their adventures as young men and now their concurrent meeting. Max realizes he is dying or is gonna die at the hands of enemies and wants Noodles, whom he double-crossed, to do the honors. Noodles renigs on murdering Max and Max instructs Noodles that after killing him he can exit the residence through a secret exit. Noodles doesn't kill Max, at least we are not treated to it on screen, and leaves Max's house via secret exit which empties on to a street. If Max had wanted Noodles to die, Noodles appearance on the street coming out of the hidden exit, or even using a light in window or something, should have been a signal to any of Max's hit men that Noodles had killed Max. Nobody jumped into the garbage truck, corkscrew slicers churning and all, we don't even see any blood. We're left at a quandary, at total SPECULATION as to what happened. The aged Noodles continues on with his life. TOTALLY AMBIGUOUS.😊
*What would have happened if Don Corleone accepted the Turk's deal? The Godfather Explained:*
th-cam.com/video/Xs8ztW-xsdQ/w-d-xo.html
Which one ? Mike or Vito?
35 plus years ago when I saw this movie I saw the part was James woods shot his self in the head and fell into the garbage truck and he got ate up by the Blades . I’m 100% positive that was on the movie I Seen.
I saw this movie for the first time on Netflix maybe a year or so ago. Good flick I was hooked from the first 10 minutes I think he just threw himself in the the garbage truck
The answer is so obvious I can't believe people are even debating it. Max turned into the garbage truck, just as Phil Leotardo turned into a house.
The shah of Iran
The fact that noodles never heard of senator bailey or seen an image of him on the news or newspapers to recognize that it was max all along, adds even more weight to the dream theory imo .
What are talking about hr knew who Senator Bailey was.
@@daveyboy_ what I mean is that he never seen a picture of him on the tv or in the newspapers also how did fat moe not know that his sister was with max?
@@alexsidenticalsiblingrandy5795 i gotta rewatch that movie .
When is the last time you saw a picture of the Secretary of Commerce? Do you even know who it is without looking it up?
@@tph2010 yes I do but I think when discussing assassinations linked with him they would show a photo of him no?
I'm definitely in the opium dream camp. The way the story was set up with the opium den starting and ending the film, plus the fact that Deborah didn't seem to age much while Noodles and Max were noticeably aged, says to me that this was deliberate to indicate Noodles is still imagining Deborah as she is in the 1930s due to his attachment to her. Noodles was responsible for the deaths of his friends and this vision was a way to cope with that and make himself out to be a victim to Max rather than own up to his mistakes.
spot on. To add to that Max used to fake death when he was a kid. So Noodles wanted to believe max is faking his death again. Last garbage truck scene was another instance of it. Noodles thinking did max again fake his death
Yes Deborah staying youthful is the giveaway.
@@chrissy2590 He faked his own death again, the feet under the truck can not be explained away as a mistake, like it was in this video... Sergio Leonne was very deliberate with detail, and that was no mistake.
Deborah è invecchiata. La si vede quando Noodle arriva alla festa del senatore Bailey.
I just realized something about Deborah. After the “Cleopatra” scene, Deborah is seen with some of her white make up on. And in the beginning seen where Noodles sees her - there flour in the air. It’s definitely a dream.
I don't know much, but I do know this -- that Noodles sure does a lotta rapin'
LOL
In the original ending Noodles raped the garbage truck.
It's part of hie characters relationship with sex. He pays for it , blsckmails.for it. And eventually takes it.
Except the secretary, she legit wanted it.
😂😂😂
I can't imagine how confusing the original edit must have been for audiences or how upsetting it must been for everyone involved to see a masterpiece butchered.
Could you imagine that, just the garbage truck scene with the cars coming back the other way and credits smh
Being american, I was so fucking confused by the version I saw
@@Vercingetorix.FantasiaI just watched for the first time. It must be the butchered version because I was left confused
@@orlandomolina7192watch the 4 and a half hour Scorsese release. Its the definitive version.
The problem with it being an opiatic nightmare is this-there is a scene where he goes to the locker to fetch the money and there is a frisbee in the scene,how can he imagine a fad”frisbee would be created.or that TVs would be popular in bars,or style of rent a car be dreamed in 1933?
you are right - the dream hypothesis is B/S and frankly it would be a dishonest way to end the film.
Yeah, Unless there's a 10 hour Leone cut out there. Where Noodles is doing DMT and shrooms with Mike Tyson, before getting time traveled back into the future with Doc Brown to help Middle earth fight the Rings of Power .
Then that theory is a fluke, Opium isn't that helluva drug lol.
Especially to dream about the future of NYC in great detail. That's God level omniscience, even for a petty gangster 😂.
@@davebyrd1394 I just watched this movie for the first time, brought my confusion to TH-cam, and this comment just took me out😂😂
Because his dream hasn't ended yet. We've been living in it all this time.
I think it’s just mistakes. The whole production was pretty messy.
When there’s a movie that people talk about years later you know it’s a masterpiece
Like The Room
@@dillonwalshpvd in its own way I could argue it is
@@V---L I mean. Im listening :p
@@dillonwalshpvd The movie was horrible, so horrible it was regarded as the worst movie ever, so you can argue it was good at being bad, not just that it was the best at being bad, which could therefore mean it's a masterpiece at being horrendous
yes dillon is mocking someone's loose definiton of "masterpiece". if using that loose definition, it equally applies to The Room. of course The Room is infamous and not a masterpiece. so OP's definition isn't very accurate. @@V---L
Many things are explained by the idea of an opium dream sequence, some that stick out to me are:
1) The phone ringing while having detailed thoughts is the first sign of it, the ringing being the reminder of what you are seeing is really over lapped by the reality where he really is.
2) The assisted back door escape from the opium house. How could someone in a drugged opium state just walk out of that house and begin their sequence that lead to him going to Buffalo?
3) The lack of utter surprise seeing Noodles after 35 years from each character. It's more of a casual, hey where ya been? And of course the line, what have you been doing? "Going to bed early". A feeling of opium induced dreaming is more of a better description.
4) The mausoleum scene is one of the biggest mysteries explain by a dream sequence. That would be the perfect thought in his head for his 3 dear friends to all be together in this huge beautiful mausoleum, with no real description of how it was commissioned.
2- I don't think is very important, the travel to Buffalo could of been in separate days and him leaving could of happen with the help of the Asian ppl, is somewhat incongruent but I personally don't think is as relevant
3-Noodles doesn't mind, he just accept it, he can't do anything and in a way he refuses to call him Max, as he never refers to him as such, Noodles also got time to think about it before hand and he is too old to even care
4- Max himself did it, he find their graves to say his goodbye and it was made by Max, which is why the key for the money is there
What if Noodles was high and the reality was the people looking for him would catch up to him in a few. He was high as you said the phone was ringing to get him to pick up and get a warning but the Chinese people did not let him answer only wanted him to relax. I think your theory is right with Deborah especially her reaction was off to me and she still looked super young. Also no one is pointing out they beat up Moe super bad and he didn’t have a scratch on him in the future you can heal of course 35 years later but how bad they beat him something should’ve resonated to me
Two facts I do know. Firstly, the scene was something of a reference to a real event, where some politician or businessman (can't remember who exactly, Jimmy Hoffa!?) disappeared, and on the day it happened a garbage truck was mysteriously parked outside his home all day. Secondly, the actor who we see standing there is not James Woods - it was in fact a crew member or something. Sorry these facts are a bit shady, they're just from memory. I'm sure someone can give full details though.
Personally, I reckon since Senator Bailey/Max asked Noodles to kill him, his suicide does make sense. But yeah I do think it was left deliberately ambiguous - hence not using James Woods. We also don't know whether he jumped in the back to kill himself, or maybe just got in the passenger door to escape. In real terms I suppose it actually makes more sense if he got in the passenger door - after all throwing yourself into into that grinding mechanism seems like a pointlessly painful way of committing suicide, whereas sneaking off in a garbage truck seems like a pretty conspicuous way of disappearing. But this is a film, and symbolism is far more important than logic - and a man killing himself by jumping in the back of a garbage truck is pretty meaningful.
There's also some symbolic significance in the way the headlights change and suddenly there's a car full of partying youngsters coming the other way - kind of an out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new thing.
I'd say this is by far the most surreal scene in the whole film.
I think this movie was edited by 4 brain dameged blokes who've never met and don't speak the same language.
those 4 blokes probably worked for Warner Bros studios.... since they were the ones that butchered Leone's masterpiece.
@Tusc9969 I'm glad someone wrote about the escape possibility (it may have, hm, escaped me, but is it even mentioned in the video here?)
Also, what i'm not finding in the first few comments i've just scrolled, is that Max going into clandestinity, albeit rather old, is a sort of simmetry/karma/retribution to what Noddles had to undergo.
Btw, i haven't looked for the joe pesci cameo in the hospital (when the union man is recovering from the shot)... and whether he actually had agreed with Max to take out the Detroit diamond man (back then - or was it hinted/shown, in those scenes) or this is a comeback of revenge, or doesn't care anymore, because times have changed and they're into an altogether different business.
I've just watched the extended cut on tv in Italy, it's good it does raise doubts and questions and food for thought. However, call me simplistic or worse (fine :D) but it all sounds bit too brainy and complicated... i can tell you, i've done literature studies and stuff, love cinema, did watch most or all Leone's works, just saying i'm nerdy enough to appreciate even heavy bits i guess! But this movie here, just sounds a bit too built-up in the plot.
Or yeah, made more sense as the original idea of 2 parts or, i'd say, an actual series, yeah.
These are all really just questions, thank you :)
Your giving opinions, not facts
@@Tusc9969No, it was The Ladd Company, and that butchered version was barely ever available after 1984.
The fact that we don't know what happened gives the film a kind of immortality...no matter how many times you watch it the question will never be answered...and so the film never really ends...maybe that's its brilliance...
Definitely. It's like why a David Lynch film, that didn't make much sense to myself upon first viewing, will still stick in my mind way longer than a linear plotted movie
No! Il film è bello perche racchiude tutto quello che può offrire l'arte cinematografica in 100 anni di cinema.
Like it 😀
No, the film literally ended. There was just no conclusion to the story.
@@Ted_Sheckler Maybe...but then again there's a conclusion to every story whether we know what it is or not...?
I just watched this film yesterday(… 🎶) and I think there’s an interesting parallel to the garbage truck scene and the scene where Max and Noodles first meet. In this scene, Noodles was trying to “roll a drunk” unseen, behind the cover of an oncoming wagon but was thwarted by Max.
In the end, Noodles thwarts Max’s plans of how things should end and Max disappears himself behind the oncoming garbage truck.
I saw it as Max was in trouble with the wrong people. He had a working relationship with the Unions and the Mafia. He knew his time was up and he wanted Noodles to do it. But when Noodles didn't, Max was "cleaned up".
There isn’t much I wouldn’t do to see the full version of the movie as intended by Leone. This film just feels frustrating because although it is great, it could have been so much more.
I can buy it on TH-cam, at least the 3.5 hr version
So, from what I hear most of the footage is not retrievable. If the studio agreed to Leone’s original 2 movies at 3-hours each then ya, we’d see a lot more scenes. But we’ll never see all the footage he wanted to use for the ‘6 hour’ presentation. Same kind of deal with Kubrick’s ‘eyes wide shut’
Wouldn't do? Rape, murder, molestation? Which one are you OK with to see the original film?
@@MrOctober44 Don’t take it all so seriously it’s just a way of speaking. I wouldn’t do any of that I’m not crazy. I’d just really like to see the movie the way Leone wanted it to be seen.
@@LucLB01 lol he just doesn’t understand something called ‘a figure of speech’ He was trying to be clever but ended up just looking like a goof, hahaha.
Did he or did he not. That is the question, and many thanks for covering this topic. Once Upon A Time In America was a masterpiece, and the ending was spectacular.
It's rubbish, immature and amateurish.
Love the genre and often point to this pile of vomit as a comparison to good movies from the mob genre.
@@louisfrost4975 20× better than the godfather
@louisfrost4975 So why don't you enlighten us all with some title of "non-pile of vomit" movies of mob genre wich you usually make the comparison with?
@@louisfrost4975There you are. That guy.
@@louisfrost4975Do you know that the director of this "pile of vomit" was offered the direction of "The Godfather" earlier than Coppola? And that he refused because he was already busy with the project of this film, on which he worked for the next twelve years?
I understand and don't discuss personal tastes, no film should please everyone and in fact I also don't like many critically acclaimed films; but that doesn't mean I can't recognize their objective value or I'll start insulting them. In particular, insulting this is just making you ridiculous.
Opium dream theory has some holes in it too. His dream accurately envisions modern cars of the 60s, though he is having the dream in the mid/early 30s. He also is reflecting to the song "Yesterday" released in 1965. Wouldn't his dream of the 60's still reflect his knowledge of the 30s, rather than actually being set in an accurate 60's?
Realistically, if you wanted to film it as an opium dream and make the spectator only find it at the end, how else would you do it? Some futuristic version of 30s would make it obvious right from the beginning, not to mention that sci-fi looks would totally spoil its atmosphere.
also for a opiumum dream thats a pretty well defined 71 mack model R
I’m 99% sure it’s a dream but there’s something that doesn’t add up. Who took the money? If Max actually died who knew about the money and took it? I wish we could see the 9 hour version
He never leaves the Chinese theatre.
The whole of the future is the pipe dream.
what money ?? you see the briefcase just at the beginning ,when they were kids...
do you really believe that max and the others having a famous pub still have their money in a briefcase at the train station??? that's part of the dream.
Noodles was a gangster, not someone who worked on Tin Pan Alley, but perhaps he should have as his "opium dream" produces a muzak early version of the Beatles "Yesterday"- I'm assuming the lyrics which are not present in the dream were also written by Noodles as their sentiment so accurately reflects his state of mind. Anyone care to explain how that "airport song" got into the dream- Leone could just as easily have used a twenties era song like, say, "All Alone". Perhaps it's just a massive oversight, along with the foresight Noodles shows in reimagining automobiles, escalators, etc.
@@xpindy he's not going to make it obvious, or people wouldn't be so surprised and they can still have their own interpretation anyway. It's art I suppose.
Noodles fails in his pursuit of the American dream (get rich, marry your childhood sweetheart), so has a pipe dream about being the victim of a great betrayal instead, in this interpretation.
That happened to be shared by Sergio Leone himself though.
' For me, Noodles didn't leave the 1930s. He just dreamed about his future, in an opium hallucination '- Sergio Leone.
Perhaps the Bruce Willis character in Six Sense should have floated around in a white robe then maybe?
“The peculiarity of opium is a drug that makes you imagine the future as the past. Opium creates visions of the future. Other drugs only make you see the past' , Sergio Leone.
An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.'
F. Scott Fitzgerald
You ignore two things. While Noodles watches the Garbage Truck - there’s an Asian house clearly behind Noodles. Also, after the Garbage truck goes by, three 1930’s cars drive by in the other direction. With people in the cars wearing 1930’s garb, celebrating - with God Bless America playing. It’s just like the Prohibition Party that opens the film. ….It’s a dream.
No no it's a flashback of another time
That's David and his friends, partying in retro style. It is _not_ hallucinatory.
And by David, I don't mean Noodles.
I think if max had thrown himself into the garbage truck, there would have been some blood
@karinhowell..I said exactly the same thing..(but, so what, right..?!)~Peace
Another point in support of the opium dream theory is that Max's son looks exactly like young Max... I know they used the same actor to drive home the point that Max survived and had a child, but it's a bit too on the nose
The author of this analysis is correct. I have been personally ripped apart by a dump truck several times and can confirm that it’s an awfully painful way to die.
@augnkn93043..d'you intend this to be taken "literally"..?? Cuz, that situation could NOT be survivable..!!~~~Peace
The Dream Theory is very reminiscent of the film Mulholland Drive. A character uses a dream to escape their guilt.
the car coming past at the end with the partying kids in it is also reminiscent of the opening of Mulholland Drive
The opium dream does not hold up. Noodles dreamed what a 1964 Lincoln Continental looked like, dreamed television sets and all other items of modern society? Nooo, I don't think so. The point of the ending is this: Noodles is the only one who has come to peace with himself. Deborah has become a mediocre actress and a kept woman. No husband or real family of her own. Max has lived his life as a hood, always looking over his shoulder until it finally closed in on him. Noodles is the man at peace, who stopped "Living with a gun in his hand". Max was being watched and after Noodles told him to shove off and left, was killed by a hit man who got in the waiting garbage truck which was his getaway. This truck leaving exposing the rotating trash signifies that they were all trash.
I have my own theory. On two seperate occasions earlier in the film Noodles kills men involving machinery. There's the scene where he starts up the elevator as a ruse and then shoots the guy in the back of the head, and then there's the scene where a guy tried to hide in the pillow factory and Noodles turns off the thing blowing the feathers, revealing the man and then shooting him. Thus, Max appearing at the end next to the garbage truck implies that Noodles did indeed kill him in the 30's and that this vision of him as an old man is just an opium dream.
I think its just as likely Max just got in the passenger side of the truck, he's the master of faking his death. If he gave Noodles $1,million For him to do the hit, you know he had a couple of million to start a new life somewhere else.
But if he had killed max that would had more guilt to him
Nah, max could see that noodles come to terms with max death a long time ago, the max who noodles loved and lost died with patsy and cockeye. Noodles always loved Deborah, but he knew Deborah would never forgive him.. it was enough for him to know that Deborah made the right choice by leaving him to pursue her acting career.
This film breaks my heart when I watch it.
Same here..I literally just finished watching it. Prolly one of most depressing movies I’ve ever seen....have a great day🙂
in a deleted scene when the elderly noodles is walking around the neighbourhood there is an old building being torn down and the workers are throwing debris in to a shredder and noodles is mesmorized looking in to it. it mirrors the dump truck's shredder plus there is asian writing on the dump truck which is a nod to the opium den where noodle's inagination is concocting the entire story.
Noodle is a crime boss still. He knows about Max new identity all along. He has'nt seen Max, Deborah etc for all these years yeah, but he knows roughly their whereabouts. The garbage truck team is Noodle's own and yeah, he kills Max. Max wanted out by gunning, Noodle gave him a crushing in the back of the truck.
Chapter 9 in the Book, The Hoods '' { Basis for the Movie } Starts of with a dream - Maybe this is where Leone got the Dream Theory from ? - He uses Pseudonym's for Prohibition Gangsters such as Joe Adonis, Frank Costello , Dutch Schultz, Owney Madden , Lucky Luciano and more , - In this dream also sees Delores Dancing AKA Deborah and she is calling to him - Is this the Ballerina scene he sees when hiding in the Bathroom in the movie ?? - Would love to see the 2 X 3 hour Pictutes - There was 10 hours of footage done- This is probably uncovered somewhere in his Daughters possession ?
Definitely a dream sequence. Leone and company knew they were being surreal to imply it's a dream. It adds an endless amount of possible discussions and debates over the meaning of every scene of the film.
Then explain how Noodles, being able to visualize cars, fashion and culture of the future, when he have never seen it, the mind can't visualize what have never been seen.
If anything, people back then had a totally different view on where society would look like in the future, similar to how we do that today based on current trends. Hence for it to be a dream, the mind has to visualize familiarity, we would have seen a different world.
@@birdsteak9267 the wizard did it
Such a fantastic film and highly underrated. Thanks for this amazing video.
It's shite.
@@louisfrost4975 🤡 Call your nanny and keep watching Teletubbies
@@sciarrillo Love the genre, this just the worst example of it. I think it was written by 3 12yo lads. Who've never met.
The garbage truck is real - at this point in the narrative, Noodles has woken up and has been found by the assassins. He's still intoxicated enough so that he's still partly in the dream, but also returning to the 1930s. The door he walks out of isnt at Bailey's house, but at the opium den. That isn’t Max or 1 of his men, but 1 of the gangsters looking for Noodles. The 1930s car signals that Noodles has "returned" to his time, and it's his body that ends up in the garbage truck.
Bruh...
I love this movie but it has the craziest ending!
I think it was like the scene where they fell into the water , cus if you look underneath the Garbage truck when it's driving , you see Max running up to the side of it . And if he did jump in the back that would be messy .
this film is great, something like the sopranos or Goodfellas you still like the mobsters no matter how depraved they get, but this film shows how ugly it really is and doesn't make it look attractive at all
Car rape was unsettling
@@CastleBlackWatches ...it broke my heart cause Deborah loved him
@@CastleBlackWatches. The hardest thing in the movie to watch 😢.
This movie is a masterpiece 👏
4 other members of their gang. You forgot Dominic. Who's murder by Buggsy, was avenged by Noodles. Then Noodles got pinched for stabbing a cop in the same incident. This is very important for the Noodles character arc. Which was brought to the audience's attention later on in the film when Noodles mentioned Domimnic's last words "I slipped ".
Any time I hear that phrase I think about Dominic. Rip.
I finally watched this film for the first time. A true masterpiece.
Wanna go for a swim?
I watched for the first time too by my father's indication. He watched when it was at the cinema in the 80s, we have completely different views about the movie. For example: he thinks Deborah was a cheater and manipulated Noodles since the beggning and i think she liked him but choose to persue her career.
Most of all the movie gave me more questions than answers😂
@@purplepink139 I feel the same way about her. She knew it was noodles that she was with but she saw/assumed the influence that Max had over the group and positioned herself to align with Max.
PURSUE! Please learn to spell.
@@nobull9541 you were that triggered by that as to where you used caps and exclamation points? Sheesh relax.
I think that good old Sergio wanted us all to discuss about this for the rest of our lives.
One of the best movies EVER made. Period!
I think we would've HEARD Max if he jumped into the back of the dump truck....
Wasn't there s gunshot before he fell into the truck? I could be wrong but I'm have to re watch it again.
There is no blood on the razors... I don't think he is jumping in.
Amazing film, although the ending left me baffled and a bit disappointed
Look at the garbage truck. There is standing 35 on it. Its 35 years between Noodles ran off in 1933 to 1968. Thats not a coincidence.
So the truck represents something, like 35 years of noodles life.
Debra was still young looking probably symbolizing how Noodles sees her as innocent. 😊
I never could get past the ringing phone. It went on forever. I gave up. Maybe I should try and give this film another watch.
Yeah skip that and watch it...
There's also the multiple drawn out rape scenes that make you disgusted by the characters doing them but the movie just brushes them off like nothing major happened...
@@QuebecSouverainNo, the phone ringing is worse, snowflake.
If it was a dream, I think Noodles would have dreamed of all the guys in the car were alive.
I am glad you guys liked this movie so much, the music and casting (how beautiful was young Jennifer Connelly and how great of an actor was Scott Tyler who played young Noodles!) was amazing but I was terribly disappointed. Never once in his life does Noodles make an actual decision. Like young Deborah says, he's just a two-bit punk who follows his mommy (Max) around like he's a little boy without the power to make his own decisions. He never fully decides to commit to Max and his schemes and he never fully decides to pursue Deborah and do what is necessary to be worthy of her. So, in the end, he loses both of them and his life is one big regret. I am trying to think of any character in this movie who ends up happy and content with their life, and I'm coming up short.......?...... I agree with the presenter of this movie that whether or not Max kills himself in the end is completely irrelevant. The story itself dies of its own inadequacies. I think the movie could have been partially salvaged if Noodles had taken his million dollars and spent the rest of his life making things up to Deborah, but of course, that doesn't happen............ Again, like Deborah said, "he will never be my beloved, what a shame." The smartest person in the entire movie was a twelve year old girl!
I always believed Max went into that garbage truck, though I was very young, and tended to take things at face value when I first watch this movie. If I were to rethink it, see it more as he played his final visual trick, and made you think he magically disappeared, perhaps getting crushed. Because it does seem choreographed a little too well.
The blades would have had blood
I'm not terribly fussed to figure out details like this. I view the film from a thematic perspective. It's a tale of wasted lives. The young fellows were driven by insatiable need for power and wealth, but succeeded in merely wasting their lives.
I always assumed the truck was a back up plan and yes he threw himself in.
Most other theories seem to make no sense.
Except there really wasn't any subtext to show Max being such a painslut that he'd choose such an end
You would need it for body disposal no matter who did the hit
When discussing this I have a clear memory of that there WAS one or two traces of blood (or somethng else that was red in color)shown after the truck, in the movie-after that the sound from the truck also had suddeny changed. My impression has been that probably the script writer wanted it to look like Max jumped in. Does anyone more than I remember the rather thin red trace on the road? It was a long time since I saw the movie, but Istill recall this detail.
I have met Elizabeth McGovern ( Robert De Niro's love interest) a few times and I found her to be very down to earth. She lives in West London and I was surprised at finding out how big she was in the 80s. She has since appeared in Downton Abbey, a British TV series.
Bugsy was such a deliciously evil character, I wish he had more than 2 scenes
I never bought into the Opium theory mostly because there is no way Noodles can dream up the peace sign, hippies, black leather jackets, and 1960s cars. I think this theory would hold weight if you saw 1930s cars in the 60s throughout the sequence. Also a 1960s song plays in the sequence, that is just virtually impossible to predict. I do think however, the last scene might be a dream Old Noodles is having at that moment, and that the past is more so a stream of nightmarish memories that haunt him.
My take on it is that the garbage truck is symbolic - removing the trash. The "Once upon a time" format is indeed a fairy tale, however, fairy tales act as camouflage for what is really going on in Life. I'm not sure the whole film is an opium hallucination; if it was, why didn't the film open with Noodles in the opium den and proceed from there? I think it is relating the story of early organized crime in America, with characters representing real-life characters that we all know. The opium den scene, I think, is Noodles escaping from the bitter mistakes he made in his life, on different levels. Conventional wisdom is that he Gentiles tend to get drunk, while the Jews lean more on drugs as an escape mechanism; opium is also more cerebral, which Jews are perceived to be as well.
The older Noodles was still living in a time where Politicians tended to be well-known locally, as opposed to nationally, so it would make sense that he didn't know Bailey, or ever see a photo of him. Even if he did, he could have simply wrote it off as a look alike of Max, since Max was confirmed to have been burned up beyond recognition; and official accounts still carried weight back then.
I think I saw an extended version of the movie years ago, but I don't believe it was the 4 hour one. I would have liked to see more of Jimmy O'Donnell and the relationship formed between the Gangsters and the Union; that piece is interesting, especially since Unionism is often portrayed politically as Collectivism, while Gangsterism is collaterally portrayed as Capitalism writ large.
I hate the whole it was a dream explanation. Sounds like a cop out, pardon the pun.
After the switching of the babies the political guy says you have take out old garbage in front of Noodles, when they were popping champagne. I had a feeling Max's ambition started there..
And what about the scene where they drive off the pier and the boys are in the water screaming out for Noodles who doesn't appear (the way Max did when they were kids on the boat) but then it cuts to the 1968 garbage truck grinding away outside the gate in the day time?
Without Leonne's proper cut of two films both six hours in length, we shall never know. I am trying to find a copy of the book it is based on to understand more of the subplots.
I think after the success of Peaky Blinders we could do with a reimagining of the story over a 12 part TV series.
This is originally a 12 hour movie?
@@bri7757 not a 12 hour movie. Originally Leone intended to make a 6-hour cut and release it in two 3-hour parts like the movie Novecento, but the studio didn't want that and ended up releasing the 3h40m cut
that magic by Leone, still I would like to know what happen at the end ?
One thing that is puzzling. Assuming it isnt a dream, who put up the monument( that a taxi driver takes noodles to in 1968 en route to the neighbourhood. )
to the three who died at the bank heist. It says that it was erected by Noodles but he fled NY in a hurry , being hunted by killers so he wouldnt have had time to do this .
My guess is Max paid for it to be done
Bugsy wasn't their boss. He was their rival and bully.
The time Noodles is watching the television with fat Moe, where Sec Bailey's assassination attempt was part of the news, Bailey looked nothing like Max. So, that's where the conundrum lies. Bailey wasnt Max. The latter part that followed was probably an imagined series of events, in some drug-addled stupor, leading Noodles to redeem himself of his guilt of having had Max killed, inadvertently, and despite the grim provocations by Max, not killing him. Saying "that is the way i see things" AND adding his view of the story where he says he was trying to save Max from himself but it ended up getting Max killed. As he walks out and away, the garbage truck is a metaphor for all that is left of something beautiful that perishes with time. Consumed by betrayal, lust, greed, and lies. The whirring blades keep spinning and fade into the story repeating itself. Friends in a car passing by, laughing, chucking a bottle - not caring which stranger it may hurt. Max is back again at the opium den - younger. And chuckles at the irony and his ability to repair the part of him that hurt.
Whichever way you look at the film's plot, both the real or the dream scenarios are masterfully done with the footage used in the proper form. In a rather large nutshell the easy plot line is that the film is about a guy who loved his gang (and the people he grew up with) so much that he was willing to do anything to help protect them and every time that a tragedy befell his gang (death of a member or Debora's leaving) and he just couldn't deal with the reality, he would turn to the opium den for escape. At the end of the 3 plus hour cut you see Noodles looking back (after what he assumes is Max's suicide) upon the night he originally thought Max and gang were gunned down. A beautiful scene to be sure but what if it were a dream for the reasons that have been mentioned in many talks about Sergio's gremlin-type, tounge in cheek way of dealing with his overly enthusiastic aduiences? That can be fun too. There were quite a few cuts of this film that had basterdized the ideas and ended up making the film even more confusing. The original VHS American trimmed down cut adds one small but maybe important tidbit to the dream scenario. Let's say the opening scene is real where the boys from Detroit are hunting down Noodles. Noodles goes to the opium pagoda and gets high to dream a happier ending to his life so far as his brain twists and turns what happened in the gang's life to fit a narrative he can come to terms with. The dream begins after he puffs up. The sounds of "God Bless America" are heard in the background for a bit and the dream is off and running. Move to the ending where Max runs out and jumps into the back of the garbage truck as it rides away. STOP. In the early American cut, as the truck pulls away we hear two gunshots and we see the usual back of the grinding gears and then a shot of Noodles watching as we also see, in the background a quick shot of a pagoda. (Opium den???) The truck's lights dissolve into a 30's post prohibition car coming the other way with "God Bless America" playing in the background. As Leone once said, "Maybe Noodles never got to leave the 1930's..." The gunshots make some sense but just how much sense, who really knows? Did this ending mean that as we see the pagoda and hear the shots and the song, Noodles life is drawing to a close because the boys from Detroit have found him? In that original (bad) cut the shots make perfect sense for the dream aspect but they never appeared again in any other cuts. Was it overlooked?
Max was walking behind the trash truck and then disappeared so he jumped in. He knew he was a dead man and was serious about Noodles whacking him. Maybe there wasn't blood on the compactor blades because they were cleaned off as they rotated against the rest of the garbage by the time Noodles looked in. Why go through all that trouble to bring Noodles back to kill him and not die and just left things as they were and he wouldn't have been the wiser after all that time. Max owed him the money and the deed. An Opium high could not go into the future with so much detail as if he was a future reading gypsy. while high. LOL!
So let me get this straight. The possibility that a guy on the back of the truck with a gun with a silencer, putting two in his doom and throwing him in the truck is ludicrous. But Noodles dreaming 2 hours or more of this 4 hour movie isn't? Ok! Seems to me like Noodles wasn't alone in those opium dens. 😊
Have you ever heard about watching your life flash before your eyes? That can be 90 years if you’re 90 when you die. He’s not dead but he’s on opium going through only 2 hours worth of information quickly.
I've seen this movie countless times.. I do believe noodles and the crew are from Brooklyn Williamsburg. Where a lot of Jews reside today. I'm from the Lower East Side and see a project building when Dominic died. And that was the Manhattan Bridge the were under. It's crazy how Debra had a kid with Max and was ashamed, even though Noodles tried to rpe her.. when you see her face upon entering she warned him, to keep they memory of his crew pure, instead on what he was about to see.. but messed up to say you can see the potential of betrayal from when Max moved to his hood. Dealing with the watch. But as I learned, as did Noodles, Love is blind. This movie is a great lesson in that.
He didn't try, buddy, he actually did R8pe her.
Opium or no matter what drug you take, it will NOT allow you to know what's going to happen in the future. Noodles rented a car in the future from a car rental agent... how does Noodles know what cars will look like 30 years into the future, the car rental agent's uniform what his uniform would look, what the train station would look like in the future, or the digging-up of the graves when he returns back to NYC? People put a lot of emphasis on Noodle's opium trips. But I believe simply that he used opium to escape guilt, stress, and anxiety... and the opium did NOT allow him to make up an imaginary future The director's cut is non-linear allowing us to see three different times in Noodle's life... as a boy, in his late 20s/early 30s, and as a man in his 60s. Unlike the movie, "SLAUGHTER HOUSE 5" Noodles did not become unstuck in time and travel to different times in his life. It's just that the narrative divided up his life into three testaments of his life. NEW OPINION: I think Max possibly faked his death again. Why? I looked into the garbage truck and didn't see any red blood dripping or squirting. I think Max planned for the garbage truck to be there and rode on the side of the truck. I think he possibly hired the guy(s) driving the truck to help him escape to another state or country. Max KNEW other gangsters were bent on murdering him so he wouldn't testify in court. I also think Max worked it out with Frankie and his lawyer to do the Federal Reserve Bank job to kill Noodles, Cockeye, and Patsy. AND I wish we could see the original script because I think Joe Pesci's character probably had more of a larger part in the story. GREAT FILM!
I've always assumed (and don't consider myself nor the theory to be 'silly') that Bailey was assainated by the work crew per his prediction of his impending doom. I never heard these other theories but find the video thought provoking if unconvincing in making those alternative endings make sense for ME. to each their own. Good art is always open to interpretation.
PS, and believe it or not, again I speak from experience, they never made garbage trucks with weird twisty screws inside them. They've always actively compacted garbage with hydraulic rams. THAT was a prop truck made to look evil. I will admit I always thought Max shot himself and fell into the truck. Wasn't until now I noticed the screws.
Thanks, I think you have a point! ..'made to look evil' and with tinted windows in 1968!😅 I did a research on NY era garbage trucks pertaining to the 1960s after reading your comment here(and I've commented on this scene elsewhere in the past). I couldn't find any trucks with corkscrew waste grinder. However in the scene the overclean truck is seemingly poised to make it's rounds on the street but there is no garbage anywhere. Just a thought😉
He didnt jump in
The people sent to kill him did.
They arrived in a garbage truck and waited for him.
People forget about the deck on the back of those trucks that two people ( the collectors ) ride on.
He wanted Noodles to do it before they did.
When Noodles refused, Max put on his coat walked out and waited patiently for the hit.
They "collected" Max and tossed him in the compactor where he was crushed to death.
Max didnt want to just vanish , or be remembered as a suicide ...both would be considered an admission of guilt.
He wanted to be found murdered.
He was sure that once Noodles found out how deeply he had been betrayed , he'd do it without hesitation.
But Noodles gut instincts caused him to just walk away.
The reason his old girl still looks young is because thats what he sees , he still loves her.
How did he get his friends killed? He tried to stop it
I thought Max threw himself in the truck out of a lifetime of guilt and shame. Now I must watch the 4hr version and think again. Thanks!
Cycles repeating themselves....Max knew Noodles would refuse. I wouldn't doubt that he set Noodles up again, and once AGAIN faked his own death. That smile at the end by Noodles though 😏. Genius ending, but HIGHLY perplexing. Great review and commentary 👍
The big give away was that he would see the girl, his one love, guilt ridden by their last "encounter", as the same age she was the last time he saw her face. When you think of past loves, you see them as they were, not as they are. It was certainly an opium induced dream. Not to mention that one could let themselves be ground up in a garbage truck without making any scream, or any blood showing on the blades.
watched about almost 50 times ,most favourite film
You don't mention the car loads of partiers driving through after the dump truck leaves, appearing to be celebrating the end of prohibition? As you mention in the other video; it suggests this was all a dream; and, his 1930's mind is trying to pull him back to reality in the opium den? I also think the smile at the very end is simply Robert De Niro himself laughing at us while we are trying to figure all this out!
the ringing of the phone in the first scene of D'Niro drugged out, means the thugs catch up with him. In the end, it's not a new scene, it's the same scene revisited at the end (him drugged out smiling). D'Niro is smiling because he's imagining what might have taken place, but didn't because he soon dies when the thugs catch up with him. The reality is, the entire pack are killed because of his lame plan to get them busted and the rest of the movie after the smile point, was his imagined drugged out idea of what *could have been. It's his imagined happy ending. It's his drugged out way to deal with what happened and not to face his soon to come immanent death.
I think noodles might of wanted that to happen seeing max come out
but he then snapped back to reality reason for max disappearing after the passing truck
likely the mind altering substance was taking a toll on him and noodles at the end scene using the substance was a way of him coping with all the drama hes been through like as if max was haunting him
in the garbage truck scene if you watch the back passenger side wheel, you can see his foot and he hops on the truck.
It was clear that Max did not throw himself into the garbage truck because the camera zooms in on the open backend of the truck and we see no body parts, not even blood. It's Sergio Leone being the magician showing: no, not in the garbage truck. Where did Max go children?
For most of my life, I didn't like the dream scenario but it is actually the one that makes the most sense after all we are shown in the film.
It doesn't change how much I love this film so for any viewer in doubt I say it's fine whichever scenario one chooses.
It is but cinema.
Anybody who knows how those old garbage trucks operate would know that he didnt jump in the back of it, lol, to be slowly minced by that slow turning screw while being totally silent lol, there are no assassins in the garbage truck, he just hitched a ride and set in the cab to disappear again. Or just see what Woods says in interview about that scene, what happened to the character he plays,he disappeares behind the truck end scene, its not written in the script, but if you were 7 years old when you watched the movie you might have thought he jumped in the back you silly goose 😂
Reasons for why it was NOT a "all a dream"
1. "Third-person scenes". The movie opens with Eve being killed, Fat Moe being bitten up, and the mobsters looking for Noodles. In the extended version, there is a long dialogue between Max/secretary Bailey and Jimmy O'Donnell discussing the corruption scandal and signing papers. These scenes are shot from a 'third-person' perspective. They are not shown from Noodles' first-person's point of view, because Noodles was not there to witness them. Third-person scenes are our access point to objective reality and there is no way that Noodles could have dreamed those scenes.
2. Original plan of the movie. Sergio Leone shot something like 10 hours of footage. His original plan was to make two 3-hours movies, but the producers did not agree because they thought it was too risky box-office wise. Then Leone cut the movie down to a 4 hours run time, and then to a 3 and a half hour run time (also known as the 'European cut'). The producers cut it down to 2 and a half hour without Leone's permission (the 'US cut') and the end result was a disaster. In any case, there's no way that a story that was originally planned to be told in two 3-hours movies is "all a dream".
3. The meaning of the smile. Let's examine these two scenarios. Scenario 1. Noodles understands he has been tricked into believing in the death of Max, who in fact is hiding exactly like he did that time, long ago, when they were swimming. Noodles tragically smiles, because he understand that the joke is on him. Scenario 2. Noodles smokes opium and he has a drug-induced dream in which Eve (the only woman who loves him) is brutally killed, he is forced to leave New York, he then comes back decades later when he is poor and lonely, his only living old friend is also poor and lonely, he finds out that his best friend betrayed him, he is now with the woman he loves and they are both wealthy. Noodles smiles because... hold on, what would he have to smile about? It's a horrible nightmare, there's absolutely nothing to smile about. Yet that smile is the key. In Scenario 1, that smile in the very last moment of the film is very powerful: it shows us that Noodles knew everything all along, and decided not to believe in what he knew for 30+ years. In Scenario 2, that smile makes no sense.
4. Sergio Leone's cinematic philosophy. Leone was not telling 'small' or 'private' stories, in the sense of stories revolving just around individuals. Rather, he was using individual characters to tell the collective story of the US. He did so to 'de-construct' the 'American dream' conveyed by Hollywood movies. In this way, his cinematic philosophy was both a criticism to the Hollywood way of telling story and, at the same time, a sort of 'cultural and political criticism' to the back-then dominant ideal of the American dream. Instead of 'American heroes', Sergio Leone showed American 'anti-heroes'. He criticized the very 'origin story' of the US by making westerns (or 'spaghetti westerns') where white people are not heroes fighting against the wild native people: in Leone's movies, there are no native people left around anymore and white people are just killing each other. In Once upon a time in America, he went even more 'political'. The mobsters are integral part of US politics, and even people fighting for workers' rights (who are perceived to be the 'good people') are compromised with them. Mobsters even change their identities and become politicians themselves. In the end, however, all that 'rubbish' is trashed and forgotten, leaving people with the idea that the US are a perfect place, with young people drinking the once-forbidden alcohol can go on happily singing "America! America!" (that's exactly what happens after the party scene and the symbolism of that scene couldn't be clearer). This is the reality Leone wanted to talk about. If we stick we the dream interpretation, then the movie it's all about Noodles, his life, his traumas, his memories, his drug induced dreams. If we think that what we see is real, than the movie is about America. The title of the movie is Once upon a time in America, after all.
5. «But even Sergio Leone said that the dream interpretation is valid after all!». Yes, he said it is a valid interpretation, not that it is the RIGHT interpretation. On the other hand, he never said that the no-dream interpretation was wrong or even not valid. Beside, when Sergio Leone spoke about the dream interpretation, he was kind of half joking. of course he didn't want to spoil the ambiguity of the movie, that's why he would have never said "Oh no, that's the WRONG interpretation". Directors play that kind of tricks all the time: they know that providing right and definite answers would 'kill' the work of art, in a sense. Yet, the answers are all there to be seen: in the production history of the movie, in the scenes of the movie itself, in the coherent whole of Leone's cinematic philosophy.
You mixed up it a bit. The opening scene isn't in 60s, it is in 30s. Also last scene with Noodles smiling takes place in 30s, which is somehow mysterious.
@@KJKzK excuse me, but where did I say that the opening scene is in the '60? I know that the smiling takes place in the '30s and it is not mysterious, insofar as that scene from the '30s, shown at the end, gives a whole new meaning to what happened in the movie (we think Noodles didn't know the truth, the smiling scene let us know that he knew everything all along and decided not to believe to the truth).
@@vins1979 @vins_vins The dream theory assumes that that only events with old Noodles were a dream, and you mention Eve's dead is supposed to be proof that it wasn't a dream, that is why I pointed it out. There wasn't any Third-person scene in 60s in final movie. Also I am not convinced about "he knew everything" because Noodles was confused when he first time met Mr. Bailey, also scene when he talks to Deborah in 60s or Mausoleum scene proves otherwise.
@@KJKzK but there are third person scenes in the 60s. If you watch the final cut, you will see a rather long scene between Secretary Bailey (that is, Max) and Teamsters' union boss Jimmy O'Donnell. That scene is clearly and evidently third-person, since it's a private conversation between Max and Jimmy, at Max's home, and Noodles is not even in that home yet. Also, the movie begins with Eve being killed and Fat Moe being beaten up. Then it cuts to Noodles in the Chinese theatre. Then Noodles is on the run and he goes to Fat Moe... whom Noodles finds all tied up and beaten up. How could Noodles possibly dream what really happened to Fat Moe? (And we know that all the beating up really happened because it is shown in a third person scene.)
@@KJKzK Also, the scene at the Mausoleum proves nothing. The point is: in the '30s, Noodles realized that Max was not dead and that he fooled them all. But Noodles does not know that Mas is actually mr. Bailey, nor that he built the mausoleum, of course.
Don't think that Sergio Leone would make such a mistake about Max hopping onto the garbage truck. He's too good for that.
A bit of trivia from the circle one biography by Christopher frayling, the actor going into the garbage truck a guy who looked close to James woods, in an effort to confuse audiences about who it was
I also believe that the end is an opium dream. But: who stole the money in the vault?
My theory is he’s reliving a nightmare that has haunted him since he made that phone call. We you opioids both legal and illegal. To dull the pain
If you watch good,you can see foot running after the truck,like someone go with the truck and leave.
Sorry if its not so clear,im french.
So maybe max leave,or more probably it s just an error from Léone
Once Upon a Time in America was a very very good movie I can watch that over and over is almost as many times as I can watch The Godfather 1 and 2
The intro!!!🤣🤣 “bing what are you doin here? I thought I told you to go fuck ya motha!”
What about the Frisbee flying thru the air and caught by a mystery hand scene?
Yeah! With the briefcase.
Why did U mention the ending of the sopranos it was a spoiler
Max was watching him from when Noodles went to their mausoleum. And saw the key, a deleted scene is where he wrote down the license plate number.
I’m late but I like the concept of the dream theory and mainly that is because of Deborahs entire arch. He raped her that was the last time she seen him outside of the train scene and I do not believe she would even be that calm or allow him in her space alone like that even after those years. It worked out perfectly that she was with Max which makes no sense cause although they are similar in a lot of ways Deborah probably wouldn’t want anything to do with the men of her past especially so close to noodles. She always seemed like she was above it. Noodles and Max shared women the entirety of the movie butDeborah was off limits I can see in his subconscious him thinking Max was always in love with her that’s why they didn’t like each other and he would steal her as soon as he got the chance. She also was still young looking in the present day
I thought he committed suicide with the trash truck.He was facing prison time ,and couldn’t handle descracing his family.
Max's fate should not be correctly speculated or witnessed by the movie viewers, but be determined only by Max himself.
I think that Max threw himself in there because he felt ashamed of what he had done - that he saw himself as garbage and thats where garbage belongs - in a garbage truck - but then again, if the whole thing was an opium dream, Noodles future and all of that, is it just Noodles’ mind trying to make sense of everything and trying to piece together the answer of who might have betrayed the gang, a way of trying to get closure for everything that he desperately sought with his trips the opium dens
The Garbage truck was for Noodles if he acquainted Bailey with Max.
That's why DeNiro supplicated himself to Woods character.
13:20 thanks a lot to speak about that!!i thought i was alone to have seen that and i ve been so splitted about that.was it intentionaly from leone to let us think max leave with the truck??or it was just a mistake??i think it s a mistake,as you think,but it s still strange in my mind...Léone didnt see that?thats strange...
Excuse my english im french.
Thanks again for your video bro
What about the car which pass foward Noodles after the trash truck? All that people celebrating like prohibition ends, have no sense, I think this confirm that all that old noodles thing is just because the opioum.
Here's how you solve the matter.
What's in it for Max to leave his death ambiguous in the mind of Noodles? There you go. Now you have something.
Leone may not have had a logical ending, so he left the ending ambiguous - good for him. There's so much to latch on to that one can't fashion a constructed ending. When the boys still teens make their big cash gain, they put the satchel with the money in a safety-deposit box. Notice the safety-deposit boxes still stay the same for 30-40 years and are never upgraded ie key-to-combination lock etc. Fat Moe is given the key and they pledge not to open the safety-deposit box until all the members are together, probably not to give any one of them any 'big ideas' of running off with the money - after all friendship is one thing, money is another. Leone uses much intercutting of events to give time, place, circumstance mainly seen through Noodles's eyes. When the three members, Patsy, Cockeye & 'Max' are murdered in 1933, Moe and Noodles would be the only ones still left(Max actually survived). Noodles goes to open the safety-deposit box and the money was gone;(he must have got the key from Moe as they were the only ones of the gang left unless Max had an alternate key) So what happened to the money in 1933?
Leone brings us to 1968 and Noodles returns to his old NY neighborhood after 35 years to an older Fat Moe who is barely making it in the old restaurant. Noodles had gotten clandestine instructions from an 'unknown' person to go to the old safety-deposit box and take the money, now mysteriously reappearing after missing in 1933(inflation would have defated it's value in 35 years though the 1933 notes would have still been legal).
Noodles goes to see the 'unknown' benefactor after having visited his old girlfriend Deborah. Deborah introduces Noodles to the benefactor's son and he favors Max(now called Senator Bailey). Noodles puts it together that Max survived the ambush and the two meet and converse. Max has fathered a son, who looks exactly like the young Max, and is in a common law relationship with Deborah though it is not clear if Deborah is the boy's mother. Max achieving all that he's wanted criminally and politically, wants to destroy Noodles and in essence have Noodles destroy him.(Once again Leone is ambiguous, is Max dying or is the mob about to cut him down?) Max thought he had destroyed Noodles by taking his money and his lady love but alas in 35 years couldn't find him. Noodles had gotten a bus ticket and was living in Buffalo evidently pondering for 35 years where the money could have gone --Fat Moe asks him what has he been doing for all these years, Noodles responds saying going to bed early.
Max lives in a fancy mansion residence and proceeds with the reachout to Noodles who comes to the mansion. They converse about their adventures as young men and now their concurrent meeting. Max realizes he is dying or is gonna die at the hands of enemies and wants Noodles, whom he double-crossed, to do the honors. Noodles renigs on murdering Max and Max instructs Noodles that after killing him he can exit the residence through a secret exit.
Noodles doesn't kill Max, at least we are not treated to it on screen, and leaves Max's house via secret exit which empties on to a street. If Max had wanted Noodles to die, Noodles appearance on the street coming out of the hidden exit, or even using a light in window or something, should have been a signal to any of Max's hit men that Noodles had killed Max. Nobody jumped into the garbage truck, corkscrew slicers churning and all, we don't even see any blood. We're left at a quandary, at total SPECULATION as to what happened. The aged Noodles continues on with his life. TOTALLY AMBIGUOUS.😊