8 Classic Movies That Were Released Unfinished

3. Once Upon A Time In America

Once Upon A Time In America is a masterpiece, a giant pillar of serious post-New Hollywood cinema that only improves with age, sadly overshadowed in both the gangster genre by The Godfather and the pantheon of Sergio Leone by Once Upon A Time In The West.

The defining version of the film is 229 minutes long, but because almost four hours is a hard sell, almost an hour and a half was cut for its international release, with the non-chronological story removed, a greater focus on the De Niro segments and a general loss of everything that made the meditative film so great.

However, that four hour cut was only part of it; Leone's original version had been 269 minutes long, which he himself cut (making the 229 minute version still his vision). Thanks to careful deleted scene hunters, those removed 40 minutes have been found, although haven't been put together into an officially released version yet..

Which Version Is Better? The shorted version is a mess and only really recommendable to serious cinema fans and film historians - because of the order alteration, the story is full of holes and it lacks so much of the character nuance that makes the full movie work. Don't get in between a master and his art.