Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

229 minutes, European version. Sergio Leone moves through friendship, crime and recollection as though the past is something a man keeps revising. The childhood passages matter because the adult relationships carry their promises and humiliations forward. This is a brutal, sexually violent film whose nostalgia is deeply compromised. Avoid the much shorter American theatrical rearrangement; the long version's shifting time is central to its effect.