By Every other movie at this year’s Cannes Film Festival has become redundant with the news that the festival will premiere the original, 269-minute long cut of Sergio Leone’s incredible Once Upon A Time In America, a story spanning five decades and following young friends moving from a childhood in a Jewish ghetto of New York to an adult life of crime. Leone’s urban epic was annihilated by studio-enforced cuts when first released, dragging the running time down to 139 minutes, but was later restored to the 229m cut that Leone initially, reluctantly, agreed to.
This will be the first screening of the full-length movie, and given Leone’s huge following in France, there’s no more deserving location for it than Cannes. The restoration was completed by Italy’s Bologna Cinematheque, with help from Gucci and Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation. For me, Sergio Leone is the greatest director who ever lived. While Once Upon A Time In The West is his finest work in my estimation, In America is one of history’s greatest filmmaking achievements, a story of gargantuan scope and depth pulled off with a mastery to date only otherwise demonstrated by Akira Kurosawa. Everyone attending should book an appointment with a dentist beforehand, because they’re about to spend four and a half hours with their jaws on the floor.
[via HitFix]