Critical reception and current perception of the film

The film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival was an astounding success. Though some female audience members were understandably offended by the rape scenes and depiction of women (Leone was often accused of misogyny based on this film's content), the film was extremely successful, garnering a fifteen minute standing ovation from the audience. The uncut European version of the film won rave reviews, and was very successful throughout Europe and abroad. However, several sneak premieres in Canada and the US gained a mixed reception at best (some suspect due to studio tampering). The film was drastically edited, as mentioned above, more for commercial reasons than anything else. Leone, who had turned down an offer to make The Godfather twelve years earlier, was indignant when several American critics compared the butchered version of his film to "a Jewish Godfather". The 144-minute version was a huge flop and the American critics destroyed it. Roger Ebert however noted in a 1984 review that the original longer cut was a masterpiece, but that the American theatrical cut was a travesty.

The uncut version of the film, however, was by far Leone's most critically acclaimed film, and today it has a large cult following. James Woods who considers Once Upon A Time In America as his finest work mentioned in the DVD commentary that one critic called the film the worst of 1984, only to see the original cut years later and call it the best of the 80's. Ebert, in his review of Brian DePalma's The Untouchables, called the original uncut version the best film depicting the prohibition era. [1] Sight and Sound magazine placed it among the ten best films of the last twenty five years when they attempted to do a poll on recent films. Though not Leone's most well-known or liked film, and it is often compared unfavorably to The Godfather, Once Upon A Time In America has finally been given its due as a classic film.