Inspired by Harry Grey’s autobiographical novel The Hoods – written pseudonymously while he was serving time in Sing-Sing—Sergio Leone and an army of writers (which at one point included Norman Mailer) fashioned an epic story centering on a Jewish clan of childhood friends, led by “Noodles” (De Niro) and “Max” (Woods), who over the span of four decades become notorious New York City criminals. Ennio Morricone imbues Leone’s epic with a sad grandeur, the melancholic “Deborah’s Theme” among the most famous of his compositions for its cruel beauty. “Thriller, melodrama, citations from gangster cinema classics, as well as the cinema of Chaplin, Welles and Neorealism all come together in a voyage towards oblivion and death, in which we slowly discover, within this unreal cinematographic grandeur, Noodles’ desperation and anguish” (Gian Luca Farinelli, Il Cinema Ritrovato festival catalog, 2012).” -MoMA
