Once Upon a Time in America

Although Italian film composer Ennio Morricone had no idea Once Upon a Time in America would mark his final project with longtime collaborator Sergio Leone, an elegiac quality nonetheless drifts evocatively throughout his haunting music for the director’s final film. A powerful, even Proustian reverie on a mythologised past, this 1984 epic about Jewish gangsters in New York drifts dreamily along on the combined energy of Morricone’s freshly composed “Deborah’s Theme” and Joseph M. Lacalle’s 1920s pop hit “Amapola”. While frequent Morricone/Leone soprano Edda Dell’Orso and pan flautist Gheorghe Zamfir evoke nostalgic reveries from afar, Morricone scores more specific references with early New Orleans jazz (“Prohibition Dirge”) and the sound of Jewish children playing in the streets (“Cockeye’s Song”). As Robert De Niro puffs contentedly on an opium pipe in the film’s final scene, Morricone’s main theme arrives once again, offering as euphorically narcotic a cinematic experience as anyone might wish for.