主题：【原创】重温《美国往事》 -- 棋人鲁大耍

。。。At the end of filming, Leone had about 8 to 10 hours worth of footage. With his editor, Nino Baragli, Leone trimmed this down to about almost 6 hours, and wanted to release the film in two three-hour parts.[citation needed] The producers refused (partly due to the commercial failure of Bertolucci's two-part Novecento) and Leone was forced to further shorten the length of his film, resulting in a completed (i.e. scored, dubbed, edited, etc.) film of 229 minutes.

Leone has said that ideally, he would have liked the film to be "between four hours ten minutes and four hours twenty-five minutes" (250 minutes to 265 minutes), and that such a cut would mainly have served to restore scenes developing Noodles' relationships with women.[citation needed]

Important scenes which failed to appear in the 229 minute cut:[citation needed]

* Young Noodles returns to his tenement, discovering his parents at prayer, and no dinner on the table.

When his parents criticise him for being 'godless', Noodles retorts that money is his god.

* A brief scene in the 1921 sequences, showing local ganglord Bugsy (James Russo) and his gang being arrested by the police for bootlegging while Noodles and his gang looked on. This would occur right before the gang's meeting with the Capuano Brothers at the harbor.

The main importance of this scene would be to establish why Noodles' gang is working with the Capuanos. Dialogue from that scene indicates that Bugsy had been working with them, but since he and his thugs have now been jailed, Noodles and Co. have taken over his old job.

* Shots of a black limousine tailing Noodles.

* An ominous garbage truck, used as a link between 1933 and 1968.

* Secretary Bailey arguing with an older Jimmy O'Donnell about a pension scam, just before Noodle's climactic meeting with the former.

* An opium-induced flashback of Noodles and the gang as children.

* Scenes of Louise Fletcher as director of the Riverdale cemetery.

* Noodles' first meeting with Eve (Darlanne Fluegel), and many other minor scenes with Eve. In the original shooting script, this occurs after his rape of Deborah (which happens at night, rather than early morning). A very drunk Noodles meets Eve in a speakeasy and goes to bed with her, calling her 'Deborah'.

* Scenes of Noodles watching Deborah performing a Busby Berkely musical scene at a nightclub, just before their date, as well as scenes from Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. (The DVD's picture gallery feature includes an image of Elizabeth McGovern dressed as Cleopatra and holding a snake.)

* A scene of Noodles talking to the limousine driver before the date with Deborah. There is clear enmity between the two characters, highlighting the way in which Jewish gangsters are perceived by fellow Jews. The reason that this scene was cut was because producer Arnon Milchan, who played the chauffeur, felt that he should not have had such a noticeable role in the movie, and he did not want people to make a big deal out of his cameo.

* A long scene involving Police Chief Aiello (Danny Aiello) and his involvement with the strike breakers. (Some of the scene's dialogue was reworked into the brief interview with Aiello on the steps of the police station in the final version.) As a follow-up to this, a scene where the gang plans the famous baby-snatching scene with crooked politician Sharkey (Robert Harper) was also shot. Noodles wants to kill Aiello, but is convinced not to by Max and Sharkey.

* A brief scene during Noodles, Max, Carol, and Eve's vacation to Florida, where a lifeguard, having heard of the repeal of Prohibition, digs up a bottle of liquor from the beach and drinks it thirstily.

* An older Carol (Tuesday Weld) revealing to Noodles that Max had syphilis. In the original shooting script, this scene (set between the beach scene described above, and Carol and Noodles' scene outside the Federal Reserve) also has Carol revealing the details of Eve's death to Noodles: "Oh, how she waited, but you never showed up... She shut the windows and locked the door, and nobody bothered to check. She was in there all the time, with her little capsules...there was nobody at the funeral but me." (The latter part of this scene may never have even been filmed, since Eve's death is depicted very differently in the final film.)

These scenes were all shot, and the footage still exists.[citation needed] However, it is in a very raw state, not dubbed and not edited.[citation needed] Leone and his editor wanted to finish these scenes for a later release, but were prevented from doing so by Leone's death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_America