Dream Theory IMDB

[dave jenkins]

meta-meta-cinematic? OK.

[noodles_leone]

6/10 would be a crazily inappropriate rating for OUATIA even if they had ended the movie with the final speech from Gladiator.

[drinkanddestroy]

@ chris:

I've said many times that I agree with the double meaning. And I believe that's what Leone intended. Not necessarily that. "it's a dream, period," but that it can be viewed at many levels, one of them being a dream. That's been my argument - that the people who say it has NOTHING to do with a dream are wrong. 
If you say it has a double meaning or can be interpreted on different levels, that's what I have believed all along

[Novecento]

... and the fact that pages 318 and 319 in the shooting script relating to the garbage truck scene were removed.

Hey Chris - what's the source for this?

[Novecento]

Chris - my question was about the source of your earlier two statements below. Do you have one or is it just conjecture that the shooting script was ever longer than the original 317 pages:

The shooting script contains additional items apart from scene setting, action and dialogue and it may or may not be significant that pages 318 and 319 which relate to the garbage truck scene are missing.  It's possible that these pages were deliberately removed prior to public release to preserve this ambiguity.

This is supported by Leone's statements and the fact that pages 318 and 319 in the shooting script relating to the garbage truck scene were removed.  I think it highly likely that these contained things which were not compatible with the preferred ambiguity option.

[Novecento]

Thanks - that answers it. I was just wondering on what you were basing your suggestion that pages might have been "removed". However, I'm still not sure I buy your argument that this was intentional...

[drinkanddestroy]

Chris, is your full name Christian or Christopher? Or perhaps Sir Christopher?

[dave jenkins]

Flattering but you're way off.  Chris Bailey would be much nearer.

You mean . . . you're Secretary Bailey's son???

[drinkanddestroy]

According to what Kaminsky said in that piece in Once Upon a Time Sergio Leone, it seems he just received the story or scenario, and he wrote the English dialogue for it. In that case, he really should have been one of the credited screenwriters, as opposed to merely receiving a credit for "Additional Dialogue."

Did Kaminsky ever say anything about resenting the way he was credited? From what I have seen, Kaminsky had only positive things to say about his experience with Leone (which would make him an exception among Leone's collaborators; Sergio Donati terribly resented the way Leone treated him, including his not receiving any credit for his work on GBU. I think almost all of Leone's writers and some other collaborators ended up having a falling out with him over one thing or another, except the OUATIA collaborators; I never read a bad word from any of them about him.)

[stanton]

But the idea is still that not only the ending is a dream, but the whole 1968 time level?

[drinkanddestroy]

But the idea is still that not only the ending is a dream, but the whole 1968 time level?

of course. (on whatever level the dream exists,) it begins the moment Noodles inhales the opium, goes to sleep, and begins dreaming and smiling. So starting with the moment he is woken up to flee the opium den cuz the hitmen are after him, everything is a dream

[stanton]

Ok, but that still doesn't work for me for one second. And if I have for the 30s car at the end a realistic explanation (like rich guys driving to a costume party) or not, it doesn't change that a wee bit.

Of course the ending remains ambigious, but it is far away from being a dream or part of a dream. The point is that Noodles is not able to accept the reality of being fooled for 35 years, that he lived half of his life with a false guilt. So he leaves Max without accepting that he is Max, and then the reality begins to blur, the up to this point realistic feeling film gets a slight, but only slight surrealistic feeling, and we don't know exactly what has happened after he leaves the Bailey mansion. The garbage truck is strange, but we don't know for sure if Max has really killed himself in it, cause when Noodles looks into it we see not the slightest trace of blood, or any other hint that he really might have jumped into the garbage rotors. When Noodles looks at the disappearing lights of the truck, these lights transform into the lights of the 30 car, so for me this is a vision, a glimpse at the past, with which which the film expresses Noodles denying of the present reality and his desire to go back in that past. But Leone does not go back to the point where Noodles was at ease with himself, but at the point when he tries to escape reality and guilt. The pagoda could then be a visual link in the background which prepares for the last shot, for which Leone cuts into the opium den of the beginning. Noodles is happy, but it is only a lie. An appropriate ending for one who was always expiating for his friend. Only at the end, when he chooses Bailey over Max, he chooses for himself a lie which is at least his own lie.

To think that nearly half of the film, which is directed in the same style as the other half, should be a dream only because there are a few absurd moments and a last shot of an opiated Noodles is pretty absurd imo. If Leone wanted the 1968 time level to be a dream he must have directed it more dreamlike, more different from the rest of the film. But even then it would have broken the spine of the film's structure. I can see the tempting possibilities of directing the film as a dream, but I also see enough reasons to skip this idea, cause then it must have become a very different film.

[drinkanddestroy]

@ stanton: so you believe that (on whatever level the dream exists), the dream only begins after Noodles leaves Bailey's mansion.... IMO that is even more absurd than completely denying the possibility of a dream. The whole point of the movie ending at the opium den and ending by freezing the the final smile is that it is that the smile is the framing device for the film - or at least for the dream sequences, ie. Everything that chronologically follows the smile. (BTW, it can even perhaps be said that the ENTIRE film is a dream; that while in his opium haze, Noodles has both rememberances of his past and visions of the future; therefore, the opium den is truly a framing device for the ENTIRE movie. But I don't think it's necessary to say that.) The key moment for Noodles is that betrayal of his friends; he can't bear that thought, and therefore goes to the opium den and everything afterward is a dream. If you say that makes no sense cuz there is little visual/directorial difference between the pre-opium scenes and post-opium scenes, then you can say the same thing about the pre-garbage truck scenes and the post garbage truck scenes.... (btw, Leone spoke about how once Noodles enters that opium den, he is dead, morally dead)... Now his reaction is to get high and dream an alternative reality... The 1968 scenes do not exist in The Hoods; the book ends with Noodles fleeing New York after betraying his friends. Leone first had the idea of adding the 1968 portion to the film - of the aging gangster returning to his old neeighborhood - after meeting with the real Noodles, Harry Grey. (Frayling discussees this at length in the OUATIA chapter of STDWD.) Leone believed Grey was inhabiting a fantasy world - that, with the exception of the childhood chapters, his book had subconsciously ripped off every gangster film cliche and scenario imaginable; Grey was a man who had ceased to be able to tell reality from fantasy, they were all one for him, he was living in a dream/fantasy world. (ctd. Next post)

[drinkanddestroy]

(ctd. From previous post)
This gave Leone the idea of adding a dreamlike section to the film of the againg gangster trying to make sense of his past, trying to deal with his past, living in a fantasy world.

Plus, this was Leone's homage to the American Gangster Film (just like OUATITW was his homage to the American Western film). A homage to "a certain cinema" that he grew up on, that was his dream; the dream of cinema, as discussed, Leone said to Scorsese that movie should have been called Once There Was a Certain Cinema.
(and please don't be dumb enough to ask why Leone then didn't make OUATITW as a dream, too. It was a dream in a different sense - you don't sell the dream of a lifetime ) ..... "ONCE UPON A TIME" - a fantasy.
 Plus there is the American Dream - the point of the God Bless America song that plays at beginning and end of the movie - Leone himself (like the gangsters in this movie) had a sort of shattered American Dream, how his childhood vision of a great America was somewhat shattered when he saw the American GI's for the first time...

Anyway, if you read Leone's statements about what he intended - and if Leone's intent means anything to you - all the scenes that follow Noodles's visit to the opium den are, on some level, a dream.

[stanton]

@ stanton: so you believe that (on whatever level the dream exists), the dream only begins after Noodles leaves Bailey's mansion....

No, I don't think that is a dream either, and haven't written that above. There is a probable shift in reality, or better a moment when reality and a visionary moment began to melt, but if so, this all happens on the 1968 time level, and have nothing to do with the last scene. Only that it builds a bridge to the last scene.

The whole point of the movie ending at the opium den and ending by freezing the the final smile is that it is that the smile is the framing device for the film - or at least for the dream sequences, ie.

I don't see any reason why this should be so necessarily. It's a possibility, but not a convincing one. A better possibility to explain the end was already explained by me above. It is also a more intelligent and complex one than this dream thing.

Everything that chronologically follows the smile. (BTW, it can even perhaps be said that the ENTIRE film is a dream; that while in his opium haze, Noodles has both rememberances of his past and visions of the future; therefore, the opium den is truly a framing device for the ENTIRE movie. But I don't think it's necessary to say that.) The key moment for Noodles is that betrayal of his friends; he can't bear that thought, and therefore goes to the opium den and everything afterward is a dream. If you say that makes no sense cuz there is little visual/directorial difference between the pre-opium scenes and post-opium scenes, then you can say the same thing about the pre-garbage truck scenes and the post garbage truck scenes.... (btw, Leone spoke about how once Noodles enters that opium den, he is dead, morally dead)... Now his reaction is to get high and dream an alternative reality... The 1968 scenes do not exist in The Hoods; the book ends with Noodles fleeing New York after betraying his friends. Leone first had the idea of adding the 1968 portion to the film - of the aging gangster returning to his old neeighborhood - after meeting with the real Noodles, Harry Grey. (Frayling discussees this at length in the OUATIA chapter of STDWD.) Leone believed Grey was inhabiting a fantasy world - that, with the exception of the childhood chapters, his book had subconsciously ripped off every gangster film cliche and scenario imaginable; Grey was a man who had ceased to be able to tell reality from fantasy, they were all one for him, he was living in a dream/fantasy world. (ctd. Next post)

All this has nothing to do with my interpretation of the end.