 Yeah, welcome back to the movie show here on Think Tech. I'm Jay Feidell. It's one o'clock clock on Tuesday With George Kasin who is our movie review critic person and who finds these great movies and Buries himself in them so he can discuss them in great detail with us. Hi George. Hi. Hi Jay. How are you? So the movie today once upon a time in America and I'll tell you what, you know, why I think this is a good choice In powerful actors Not only the leads but but the ones who are not the leads and then they all made their careers on this movie This has been around for a while and a lot of people have seen it many more times than one it's a story of the immigrants in New York and the Lower East Side and It tries to show you how complex their lives were and how some of them went in the wrong direction How a buck meant so much to them to survive that did things that were illegal and It's ethical in the sense that it covers. I suppose the timeline is led by one actor Robert De Niro But it covers his whole life And so we learn about the immigrants who went astray in the Lower East Side We didn't maybe know them now. We know them better So George, you know, what does this movie tell you the key point if you go when you go through the whole movie has to do with noodles David noodles Aronson who's played by Robert De Niro and and You know What you've mentioned before you have to the pieces are there's like little little pieces here, right? That that are all jumbled together so you until you get to the end it doesn't really make a lot of sense because That that's what made this movie is the jumbling of time so To get on another aside Sergio Leone initially Had a five-hour movie broken into two two and a half movie segments, right? So it was totally five hours of screw of this, you know screen but it was cut down to Four little less than four hours for the European version Which is the one that's sort of the time is cut up So you really have to say as you said you got to really think it doesn't spoon feed you anything, right? but then for America whoever it was put distributing it here chose to reduce it to two hours and 19 minutes and it was a total flop now. Just that's just an aside, but basically What to get back to what your question was? it shows the life of noodles arison and What was the different factors that that created his life and? At the end, you know, he's First is a bunch of young kids, you know doing petty crime. That was around 1920 Then he's put into jail because there was a fight and he stabbed one of the syndicate bugsy see bugs these Some Irish guy bugsy's killed him and then stabbed a cop so they put him in jail for 12 years and he comes out in 1932 and the other his other three friends have already you know because of Prohibition they set up a speaks easy. They made a lot of money. So he gets back in with them right in 1932 33 But then Max who was sort of like co-leader with him, you know, and has taken James Woods That's James Woods. No, he knows how to play a mean character. He is he's meaner than noodles by far Oh, yeah, he's very mean and and he plays that role very well, right and max max max a million or max Birkowitz or something that was his name, right? And so basically he wants to go and rob the Federal Reserve Bank To make the big heist because prohibition is ending and their business their speakeasy Which was one of the best speakeasies in New York is going to be put out of business But noodles a speakeasy speakeasy be kind of behind a kosher deli. I love it Yeah, that's where it was. So bottom the bottom line is is You know Noodles thinks that this is nuts. He thinks that they're all gonna get themselves killed or something He thinks it's too too dangerous a heist. So he could he's talking of Max's girlfriend and the two of them decide that max is nuts and he could do this So they engineer something where they're gonna get them the other the rest of them arrested So that they don't do this to save them to save their lives, right? So so so basically he calls the police and he Stooges stools, you know tool pigeon. He tells on them, right? So that then there's gonna then they were gonna do a liquor heist of some kind, right? To do a liquor heist and it seems well What they're showing is that during the liquor heist the police kill all three of them and noodles is not with them So so they show the three of them dead there, right? And that's what you're led to believe that all three died then because it gets out in the mob that that noodles has stool that has Squealed on them right to get them arrested the other members of the mob come and they want to you know do away with noodles So they can't find noodles so his girlfriend who was that not the woman? He really loved we'll talk about that but his girlfriend at a time. It was a prostitute She gets shot because these guys come to his place. They can't find him She says she doesn't know where he is so they kill her, right? So he decides that at knowing that and then they go to Moe who runs the kosher deli, right? Who's friends with them, right? And they beat him up and they make a bloody mess of him But they don't kill him, you know, but really torture him, right? So literally Noodles decides he's got to get out of town He goes to the railroad station and the guy tells where to and he says can't decide right away And so that the guy at the rail rail station says Buffalo and he says yeah Buffalo So he got he disappears for 35 years and then after they it shows that after 35 years His rabbi sends him a letter about where his parents were buried that they're gonna be put shutting down the cemetery They're gonna be building something that they could be moving the graves to another cemetery So he knows that even though he's living under an assumed name somebody knows where he is found him So he knows he's better. He's damn well better come back and find out what's going on because You know that they're out there. Maybe they're out to kill him. So he comes back to New York City, right? And then he gets an invitation right at this I'm just tell me if I'm going on to too much J Just he gets an invitation to this estate on the North Shore of Long Island. It's beautiful I mean a gorgeous house, right? from this guy Christopher Bailey who is the Secretary of Commerce of the United States big big job, right? So he goes because he's interested, you know, and he's interested to see who's there, right? So in the meantime the woman he really loved was Deborah I jelly, right from the ghetto And she was beautiful and she was able to use Elizabeth McGovern Right also he was fabulous in this movie and this Elizabeth McGovern and also Connolly There was two different the young Deborah and the older Deborah, but Elizabeth McGovern played the older Deborah very beautiful woman So so both of them are beautiful because they're playing the same role young and old So bottom line is he had gone to visit her and she sort of squealed a little bit that she's married to some guy You know and they've got a son and then he sees the son, right? And the son is like a dead ringer for Max. So he sort of doesn't make sense, right? Looks like Max so he doesn't understand can be some then he goes to the to the estate, right? And all these famous people there all wealthy, you know, big Gatsby kind of thing if you're familiar with that novel, right? So Christopher Bailey calls Noodles into his private suite Who doesn't this doesn't make sense of it and then you see the face of Christopher Bailey and you know immediately That's Max, but but noodles just can't believe this because he'd all he'd seen three What what he was sitting behind in a car like third 40 or 50 feet away He saw all three of them dead, you know, except Max's was all burnt. The face was all burnt So bottom line is this is Max and Max gives him a gun and says I want you to shoot me Kill me because Max's Christopher Bailey is under investigation for big crimes, you know Before he's I mean, he's literally a public figure. He's this cut secretary of commerce, right? So it's because I stole your life away noodles, right? I and and he basically Played this game with the police who corrupt police to make him, you know, Max Living under an assumed name Christopher Bailey, right? And then Rose in society became very wealthy and then became secretary of commerce So noodles is really an honorable guy. He's I'm not gonna get first. He doesn't believe even though he sees the face He doesn't believe this is Max, right? So he's I'm not gonna kill you, right? So Max says please do please do please do so The way the movie ends I mean not to jump ahead, right is that Noodles leaves the state, right goes out a quiet at the back. There's a secret exit, right? And then right be and he's walking out and in front of the estate entrance the big gates is this Mack truck and The Mack truck garbage truck garbage truck right sitting there So what you know to me what the hell is this and then they turn the lights on and off and then a figure comes out of the estate and You don't know if that's if that's max or Christopher Bailey or who it is, right? And then they show the back of the garbage truck. They don't show Max This figure is standing there and the truck starts and moves between Robert De Niro and that figure and It passes by and after it's passed by the figure is gone Presumably in the garbage truck and the last shot there is the garbage truck is processing the garbage With these big grinding wheels in the back He jumped in that's the implication. That was his suicide. He jumped in the garbage truck That's the implication but some of the reviews say that that's not necessary We don't we're not this is how Leonie believe it's question. There's a question now The other thing in my mind these other two kakai and Patsy the other two guys that Patsy Goldberg and Kakai Stein, you know, these are two guys, right? when you saw them with Supposedly dead, right? But we really don't know if Max was able to stage his death Maybe they staged all three deaths. You're not really sure because you saw their face, but but you know a little bit of Seemed like they were bloody, but you don't know that could have been not real blood So the thing is you never know whether the other two whatever happened to the other two and there is a riverdale They would all moved the bodies were moved to a famous Cemetery say a rich summit wealthy cemetery in Riverdale up in the Bronx and you see That's one point when when noodles goes back David noodles goes back. He goes to that mausoleum up in up in Riverdale and you see he opens the door and there's the you know It shows the where the three are buried, right with their names 1905 1907 to 1933 and then Cock-Eye was to play this little flute or something and they have his song that he His favorite song that he loved right that that they could so there's a lot of questions, but bottom line here is It's all broken up so it doesn't really come together at the but you brought it together for us that's great George you really rendered it and That really makes it a better a better discussion here today Let me let me come up with some some conclusions on this number one is that flute that music It's haunting and it's throughout this long movie and it it holds the movie together It holds the movie when they were young it holds the movie when they were old it holds the movie, you know and makes them Human it's a it's a powerful powerful song If the if there's one thing I would say for myself that I like best about the whole movie was the music believe it or not The other thing I want to mention is that just looking at the Google You know report on this you got Robert De Niro you got James Woods You got Elizabeth McGovern Jennifer Conley. Yeah, she was the young one get Tuesday. Well, good Joe Pesci Treat Williams. All these are familiar Bert young. I don't remember the name, but you remember the face William Forsyth, he's the adult who has the problem with his eye remember the gangster with the eye James Hayden Danny I yellowed and I Danny I yellow and a woman by the name of Darlene Flubel those are the ones that are reported in the Google report But you can see how many of these people got to be famous in gangster movies later on This was 1984 that that's what did I get it right 40 years ago? That's movie was made almost 40 years ago and and the truth is Oh, most of the cast of this movie got to be famous as a result of this movie That's how good the movie was. That's how well it was seen by Hollywood and ultimately after they got over the length problem You know the reviewers and you know the industry and the public it is really a blockbuster movie It is a movie to remember for your whole life. And as I was saying before, you know, this is very interesting because people who You know came as immigrants reminds me of gangs of New York Remember that movie that was also the fabulous movie about New York in the 1830s 4050s also an epical movie The you know these these movies portray a Piece of American history That your parents won't tell you about the parents if they were related to the people in this movie. They wouldn't tell you You know, this history dies with the you know with the gangsters And you know my family would never tell me things like this that they buried it In fact, you know a lot of American history buried it But we have a little vignette here of how it was The pressure of living in the ghetto that the pressure of trying to make a buck the lack of options the lack of Education the lack of anybody who gave a rip about you a lot of these people were effectively orphans their parents were in terrible shape And they had no choices but to be real street gangsters and the remarkable thing about the murder that he went to jail for 12 years Was was a murderer of a of a kid around eight years old and he was like 11 or 12 I mean that that's that was their society. That was their world They were already in crime at that age already in gangs ready to kill people and of course it got much worse You know as prohibition came as post prohibition came You know the gangsters got worse. They got more murderous more meaner and so forth and you saw these transitions didn't you you saw the dynamics the evolution of This group of people while everybody else was going straight getting a job You know raising kids what have you these guys were off on the fringe and They had a life that was not covered in our you know popular Art literature except for a movie like this. This is different than any gangster movie I've ever seen because it was real these people were real and they were you know, they could be your uncles Your grandfather. They could very well be related to you. You would never know And so the story of Robert De Niro, you know, he could have been a brain surgeon. He was a really smart guy I'm not commenting on the James Woods character. What was that? What was his name again? Max Max million max max Berkowitz But you know movie is remarkable in the sense that these people could have been great They could have been contenders, but they they took the wrong route They got involved with the wrong people even earlier on it was a joke when they were kids But it wasn't a joke later. The other thing I want to mention to you for your interest and comment is If there's one scene in the movie That's just totally knocked my socks off It's this unrequited incomplete love affair between Robert De Niro and Elizabeth McGovern She was a real character. She was gonna do the right thing She was gonna be an actress remember and she was an actress later and he could never reconnect her You know later on the movie, but there was one scene It's a remarkable scene where he wants to Bridge the gap with her so he takes her out to dinner He takes her to a huge hotel somewhere on the Jersey Shore And he hires the whole place in this big huge ballroom Then there's nobody in it, but you know a dozen waiters maybe 20 waiters and and he and Elizabeth McGovern and they're all alone and it's like, you know 50 100 tables in there and he says to her which table would you like to He rented all the tables every table, you know, it was an expression of romance By a guy who didn't know too much about romance But he he is telling you how much he cared for and how much she cared for him But they couldn't they had gone on separate paths and they could never really get together And it ended badly for them Yeah, she told him even early on that, you know, I love you but you'll always be a punk and I'm gonna become a famous actress in other words oil and water won't mix and that's basically and until Max max million Aka Christopher Bailey became then she married him because he was on that level, you know And you know, I don't think she even well, she probably I wonder if she even knew that that was max You know, I guess she did but I'm not sure but you know, that's when she makes that's who she married and that's who she had a child with so it ended badly badly because he wasn't a nice person and Daneiro had at least the you know the possibility of being a nice person and and she was Classy she's a classy woman in a world which had very little class She was trying to make you know class for herself trying to have it a decent life She was the only one I'm looking at the cast of characters You know, a lot of them really turned out to be bums Maybe that's what made them so famous the characters. I mean what made him so famous in the You know in the in the gangster genre In all the years that have followed 1984 Because they played really good gangsters and gangsters have a dynamic, you know, I think we learned that didn't mean it was a kid You're one kind of gangster But then you get older and you get more trouble You're another kind of gangster and it gets worse and then you can't turn back You can't make good on it anymore What one other thing George from a point of view of American history? I found their coverage of the prohibition era very you mentioned it very very very interesting In fact, I want to get a history professor on the show here to talk about what prohibition was really what it meant to the country how it happened You know why Congress did that? Well, it was more than Congress. This was an amendment to the Constitution my goodness And why it came apart But what you know, what are your thoughts about that? How did that that play in the movie? It seemed to be a great way to make money Well from what I remember It was you know, there was there was the movement against alcohol was very strong among some religious groups But it was never enforceable So they realized by the time 30 the 32 rolled around and FDR came in that it was just generating a lot of crime So they decided to To scrap it, you know, it was like, you know It just wasn't enforceable so bottom line is but it was it was religious groups that were anti alcohol, you know that were Lobbying for this, you know in 1920. I'm trying to think sort of conservative. Who was that Harding and then Coolidge, you know So Ben Ben FDR came in he faced up to this and that that's when the thing was just pulled, you know, so Yeah, so that's this only really recollection I have about that Well, just hearing you recall it just it strikes me that that the forces that wanted to Terminate repeal You know prohibition which that required a big legal effort also an amendment again They they were really striking out against organized crime Because organized crime grew by leaps and bounds Al Capone and so many others in the 20s That I think it was troubling people And it's not only they made, you know, they realized they made a mistake about prohibition in terms of the way Country works quality of life and all They made a mistake because it engendered mob, mob rule and mob violence and these guys Aaron Cernan Berkowitz, uh You know, they were they were making I think they were making You know the bulk of their money during prohibition doing the speakeasy behind the deli And it was my gosh, it was a really successful speakeasy I mean we we we see speakeasies in retrospect as dark and dingy in a basement somewhere and oh no no This was a fabulous speakeasy people came with with fabulous clothes and they had music and they danced It was uh, it was a party And it was more than the alcohol though. That was central. That was the the magnet But when they came to a speakeasy assuming the police had been paid off Um, they had a whale of a good time all levels of society would come to speakeasies And it was you know, there's something really hypocritical about that These are you know politicians officials. What have you successful businessmen all of the speakeasy and there was a There was a uh an engagement with the mob there and so the mob knew them and they knew the mob was a great place to To make corrupt connections, don't you think? No, probably that's how max Aka christopher rose to become You know secretary of commerce. I'm sure you're right. I'm sure you're right connections. He made at the speakeasy Yeah, well for me and I like your thoughts about how this affects you because I know you do make those connections like I do I You know, it was hard to get a job Back in the 20s and 30s and 40s as an immigrant family Um, you know until after world war two You know the economy of this country did not favor immigrants And you know, you know, you lived in a terrible railroad flat in a ghetto There was violence or all around you You you stuck close to family if you had a family Because they would hopefully take care of you when you went, you know into trouble You know it Getting a business was a big deal And a lot of the businesses you saw for example down on orchard street in Manhattan Lower east side They were they were at the very edge. They were failing every day They're very hard to make a living and you had to be sharp as attack in order to make a living there And they clung very close to religion. There was a certain amount of Jewishness in this in this movie not much but some and That's why I thought the movie was so interesting That it told you that these guys weren't gangsters by choice. Not really the circumstances around them Forced them into it and they become they become marginalized In the legitimate people who go forward and get legitimate jobs and have real families and kids and education And you know some success in the world. These are the guys who couldn't make it that way And it tells you how How smart they were And how aggressive they were but they had something clicked wrong in their brain And they went off into a tangent Um, and I I never had seen that That particular image that view of the way The family members that nobody will tell you about How they lived but this is the the forgotten chapter in the lower east side Yeah, because without a high they hadn't finished high school So, you know, what choices did they have, you know, I mean, I don't know the new york's City schools the colleges, you know, if they were I mean, I don't know that they're free or you know You're more familiar with the new york city college. They were cheap and And you know a lot of really poor people went to them But you hadn't had enough money to live And here's the difference If you watch this movie you can see how these guys became fascinated with money The mob the life on the street the gangster way of living Showed them how to get money Lots of money more money they could have, you know gotten working at menial jobs Or selling neckties, you know from a push cart This was This was real money and they could walk around in a fancy suit at the age of 10 And be a big a big a big guy on the street at the age of 10 with a tie And golden jewelry and all this stuff at the age of 10 And you know, they became enamored with that habituated to it and it led them down the path And that's the way they were recruited into more serious mobs I will give you lots of money. You won't you won't, you know, be Marginal anymore like the other people, you know, was struggling their way through school I'm sure that's part of it. It was the fork in the road That was their only choice coming from Bowie's side and One of them, I think it was The young guy who was playing noodles said my I thought my mom is praying and my no my mom is crying and my dad is praying In their little flat, you know, and you know, like you said, you know often there was a, you know Immigrant families coming, you know Living in basic poverty, you know, lower east side was You know poor poor neighborhood So what were the options for what did these kids what what what are the options these kids had, you know That was the sadness of this whole thing But I mean to me noodles Was the he was pono. I mean he was caring for for max, you know That max wasn't going to get himself killed and then max was only looking out for himself You know and so the max were the kind of a psychopath Yeah, you know, he had pathologies He stole Noodles is david noodles is life away from him stole his girl stole everything and noodles I don't know they never showed when he lived in buffalo how he survived how he lived Did he have a menial job, you know, they they leave things There's certain things that as you said you like that Never answered certain questions never answered, but You know, it's you got to think it through and think to yourself how you know, how these questions were answered Well, the filmmaker was he didn't feel that was really important. What was important was the community of gangsters The community of these people who had known each other from the time they were in their You know five or six or seven years old and he was tracking on their Taking snapshots connecting the dots of their whole lives and since Robert De Niro Noodles was in what you say Buffalo? For all that time. It wasn't relevant. He had hit himself He was in his self-imposed exile and it didn't matter to the community of people that the filmmaker was tracking speaking of which the filmmaker is italian And a lot of the collaborators on this film are italian So you have an interesting juncture between Max jewish noodles jewish, and I don't know. Maybe some of the others were elizabeth mcgovern was jewish Maybe some of the others too But but then you had the italians and the story is written by an italian So it's the merger of of the ghetto of of the you know the The immigrant groups in the ghetto and you get to see them engage with each other and come together There's no discussion of it really it just happens But the movie, you know, it's it's inextricably intertwined with the way these people operate And that's also interesting because I think it's a true fact That the jewish gangsters they they were good at what they did and the italian gangsters they were good at what they did and there was a natural kind of You know consolidation a relationship I think that the way it jumps around that you see her Eve his girlfriend getting shot And mole getting beaten up And you really don't understand it so that they they draw on you in Then you start questioning and start thinking of what really is going on here That that's what made the longer version so Famous and so powerful and which made the shorter version With the shorter version what not only did they cut it down to two hours and 19 minutes They made it sequential So it would be like a time frames each of the time frames from the beginning to the end and it lost something there So I think it's that it's that keeping you At the edge of your seat that you want to know more, you know, it's filling in piece by piece I think that's what made the movie so powerful I mean because it keeps jumping back and forth It'll give you a scene at a certain period of time And then they jump to another period So I think that's what to me that was what made the movie so powerful and so kept my interest for four hours It's almost four hours Yeah, the other thing too is just along the same line is that it was full of surprises These characters were capable of murder They did do murder that was part of their apparition brutal immediate thoughtless murder And it was murder for hire or murder in command And you know, you'd see a murder taking place without feeling So here's a person like deniro You know who portrayed a character who was smart who had a certain level of morality And feeling he was even he cared about some things But then when he was instructed to do dirty deeds, he did him without hesitation And that surprised you It surprised you how the characters jumped all over the place to do things you would not expect And maybe that's an accurate portrayal of life itself We all do things that people don't expect and that we don't expect Circumstances just make us do those things So on a scale of five george, what would you give it? About a five think of five. It's it's a good movie. It's a good movie keeps your interests A little long, you know four hours took a long time to watch it, but it's a good movie I mean, I mean, I would suggest anybody that you know, you You can even get it online for free. I watched it for free There were options for 90 for $3.99 or free and I found a free one Which was this amazon or netflix amazon isn't carrying it netflix has it, but then I found it I forgot the name it was it was because it's an old movie. So I found a free version, you know Yeah, so so yeah, but it's one of those movies that will last forever I will never tire this movie. I've seen it like three four times already And I but I can't resist it when I see it playing and I have to go Spend my four hours. I have to see those characters and And figure what makes them tick Have to figure how they fit Into prohibition into the depression Into the gangster life And into the history of america Yeah, we need to have movies like this I think they found a copy of the five hour Initial before it was even cut the first time So I know that you wanted to review the actual version that was filmed I mean that was shown, right? But there is a five hour version that may fill in some of those gaps So we eventually take a look at that five hour version. I think it was just recently discovered in italy So what's what homework what homework are we going to give to our viewers for the next couple of shows george? I want to tell them about saying go watch the movies and bear with us Yeah, I bet I guess that the thing is, you know to If you've watched the movie already, right? Then you understand a little bit more about what we're discussing, you know, then if if If they haven't seen the movie then it's it's only our impressions you know, so it's it's important to to actually take a look at that movie and You know and bottom line, you know to get a better Understanding of what would so what movies should they be watching? What's the homework? I think you the ones you have on your docket is Berlin I love you And then the other one was Official secrets official secrets, right? So those are the two that that you're you've got on the next to be the next two. Yeah Yeah, they're both european And and really very good the berlin movie is It's a series of stories about berlin Love stories and the like Try to give you the character of modern day berlin berlin through a number of different vignettes and The other one official secrets is one of the most interesting movies I have seen It's quite remarkable. It's an english movie. It's about a woman who Intentionally violates the official secrets act which was You know enacted in 1989 and she violated in connection with Certain diplomatic maneuvers that were happening between the u.s. And tony blair Over the decision to attack iraq in 2004 So that's a true a totally true story official acts official secrets And that'll be really interesting. That's two shows from now Well, thank you george. I think this is a really a great endeavor of ours and I appreciate you're looking at the movies and Sharing your thoughts with us