8 Movies Where The US Version DELETED The Best Scenes
5. Once Upon A Time In America - Erasing 90 Minutes Kills The Ovation
When Sergio Leone's sprawling gangster juggernaut landed in Cannes back in 1984, in all of its 269-minute glory, the feature came away with a staggering 20-minute standing ovation as the crowd marvelled at the masterpiece they'd just witnessed before their very eyes.
The film was subsequently trimmed a little before making its way onto European screens, coming down to 229-minutes, but the end result was still worthy of praise. However, the same could not be said for the version of the picture that was rolled out in the U.S.
Alongside completely rejigging the way the story was told, swapping a non-chronological structure for the complete opposite and bringing the film down to 139-minutes without supervision from Leone, some of the film's most daring scenes, such as a few rather difficult to watch moments depicting sexual and graphic violence, were binned off. Many of the brilliant childhood scenes and even Robert DeNiro's Noodles meeting up with his long lost flame Deborah was also culled. The film's original garbage truck conclusion was also nowhere to be seen.
All in all, the abomination that was the U.S. cut ultimately flopped at the box office and it's probably best to forget said version even exists.