Once Upon a Time in America

Once Upon a Time in America (1984) is Sergio Leone's epic crime drama — watch online on iFILM in the full 229-minute director's cut. Robert De Niro and James Woods play Noodles and Max, two men who grew up together on the Lower East Side, ran a Jewish gang through Prohibition, and ended up on opposite sides of a betrayal that neither could undo. Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, and a teenage Jennifer Connelly round out the cast; the score is by Ennio Morricone.

The film moves across three time periods: the boys' childhood in the 1920s, their violent rise during Prohibition, and the 1960s — when an aging Noodles returns to New York and starts pulling at the thread of what really happened the night everything fell apart. Leone deliberately blurs the line between memory and delusion; the longer you watch, the less certain you are about what actually took place.

American distributors hacked the theatrical print down to 139 minutes and scrambled the chronology, turning one of cinema's great crime films into a footnote. The restored cut is a different experience entirely. Stream Once Upon a Time in America (1984) online on iFILM.