ONCE UPON A TIME IN MY MEMORY

There's a meeting place in the mind where the memory of a movie and personal experience sit together as one.

I have many films I feel this way about, where if I meditate on the memory of their atmosphere from the time when I first watched them I can conjure whole chapters of my life as if they were both one and the same.

Such a memory that returns to me every time I hear the music from the film is Sergio Leone's 'Once Upon A Time In America' (1984) where Ennio Morricone's masterpiece score is saturated in a a mood of melancholy, regret and sweet tenderness. It conjures a mythic sense of the past not too long ago as to be a 'foreign country', as in L.P Hartley's famous quote, but also not so near as to be lacking in that mystery that only time and history can distill.

"It's evident that Leone played Morricone's score on set in the daydreamy faces of his cast; in so doing, the director transformed many a novice thespian, including a prepubescent Jennifer Connelly, into someone more likely to register with the camera and less likely to be self-conscious performing for it." - Bill Chambers (FFC)

For me, the Leone movie now exists more in my memory than as a film I actually return to sit down and watch. In this sense it seems certain films from our past become more akin to distantly remembered dreams where to recall them accurately may be a challenge, but to evoke the general atmosphere of them far easier. Strangely enough, it was argued by Richard Shickel that much of the film's present day story in 'OATIA' is a drug induced fever dream in Noodles' (Robert DeNiro) head whilst he's blissed out on the floor in a Chinese/New York opium den. Of course, this theory was later debunked by someone logically pointing out that the appearance of television in the later 1968 timeline scenes would have had to be imagined in the protagonist's head long before they were actually invented. Even though the theory has been emphatically debunked, I do sort of see my way of relating to the memory of the film itself as being similar to Noodles' overall vibe in that opium den in my personal, dream-like recollection of the movie.

I can still distinctly remember my cineaste friend cueing up certain scenes from the gangster epic on his VHS machine to watch like miniature short films in themselves, enjoying the detail and mood of certain special moments with far less regard for the overall structure of the story. It was the world of pre and post prohibition New York we loved and the mood of that world, not so much the somewhat convoluted plot, although it has much to commend it in a sort of gangster equivalent of 'The Great Gatsby' type of way.

Perhaps though, this dream-like atmosphere approach to cinematic story telling was part of Leone's plan all along. It's there in the title. Once Upon A Time. The director made two 'Once Upon A Time' films - one for America and one for the West (as in Wild). Both of these films share a tangible sense of history blowing through the lives of characters as they look to hustle and survive during times of huge social and political change in their respective environments. Perhaps that's why they still resonate regardless of both being genre movies. There is a very human sense of continuity threaded through all the social and cultural turbulence where the great universal themes of love, loyalty, friendship and betrayal all transcend the material changes in the physical world whether it be railroads or new political and industrial power structures.

To take my premise one step further, I lately have this great desire to bottle the atmosphere of films like perfumes or dreams similar to the BFG and keep them all lined up on a shelf where I can open them up from time to time and infuse whole spaces with their mythic ambience.

I can imagine 'Jaws' briny, Amity Island and Peruvian jungle 'Raiders' scented bottles sitting alongside a parched desert 'Chinatown' one, as well as a 'A Room With A View' bouquet of Florentine sunshine combined with English rain.

Maybe music from these films is in itself perfume, and that is why I have found myself in this recent reverie, partially drugged by Morricone's score/scent as it takes me back to scenes of Deborah dancing to 'Amapola' in a dusty, flour infused store room or the little kid patiently choosing between gifting the girl of his desire an expensive Charlotte Ruse cake with whipped cream or eating it himself.

Remembering these scenes now, I could almost believe they were my memories and not constructed by dream makers such as Leone and Morricone.

Such is the magic of film where it becomes suffused into our subconscious and remembered just like a dream.