Long take Once Upon a Time in America (1984) - Fat Moe's cabin

• Film : OnceUpon a Time, Sergio Leone, 1984

• Scene : Noodles' return to New York, 1968 - the call to Fat Moe from the phone booth

• Position in the film : opening of block 1968, just after the time shift at the bus station (around the 23rd minute depending on the version)

• Performers : Robert De Niro (David “Noodles” Aaronson), Larry Rapp (Fat Moe)

• Director of Photography : Tonino Delli Colli

• Equipment : dolly (tracking trolley equipped with an arm) rising and then descending, in a single continuous take

• Media and format : 35mm, Arriflex cameras, spherical lenses, 1.85:1 aspect ratio

• Editing : Nino Baragli

• Music : Ennio Morricone — instrumental cover of "Yesterday" (Lennon/McCartney) for the transition to 1968; "Amapola" (Joseph LaCalle) as a recurring motif in the film

• Set design : Carlo Simi

• Filming locations for the Fat Moe's neighborhood : South 6th and South 8th Streets, Williamsburg, Brooklyn; the same block was recreated in Rome, Via delle Messi d'Oro. The precise location of this shot is not documented.

• Visual references claimed by Leone : Edward Hopper, Reginald Marsh, Norman Rockwell, the photographs of Jacob Riis

• Filming period : June 14, 1982 – April 22, 1983

• Budget : $30 million

• Film duration : 229 minutes (European version)

• Exact duration of the plan : not documented by a reliable source

A neon sign in the night: Fat Moe's. Behind the window, an obese old man ushers his last customers out, turns off the lights, and puts everything away. The phone rings at the back of the room. He crosses the bar to answer it. And instead of following him, the camera does the exact opposite: it rises, leaves the window, reveals the half-deserted street, the wet sidewalks, the neighborhood that hasn't been his for a long time. Then it descends again, gently, on the other side of the road. It lands on a phone booth. Inside, the receiver to his ear, is an elderly man whom the film just showed us as a young man only thirty seconds ago. Noodles has come in. He's been there since the beginning of the shot, ten meters from his friend, and he hasn't dared to push open the door.

Why this scene is iconic

We must consider what Leone forbids himself here. Once Upon a Time in America is the most virtuoso montage film of his career. Its opening sequence links five different locations with a single ringing telephone that continues off-screen twenty-two times before a hand answers. Nino Baragli, his editor, creates cuts that span forty years in a single image. The film is entirely built on ellipsis, cuts, and jumps in time.

And then, just once, Leone refused to cut

This isn't a virtuoso's whim. It's the only moment in the film where the present and the past physically occupy the same space, without any editing to join them. Throughout the rest of the narrative, Noodles and his memories are separated by cuts. Here, they are in the same shot: Fat Moe answering the phone belongs to 1968, as does Noodles in the phone booth, but the gesture, the waiting, the voice on the other end of the line—all of it comes from 1933. The Caen Film Club notes that this shot is the only one that seems to link present and past in a single arabesque, and that "the broad parabola traced by the camera suggests mystery and ritual," transforming a street corner into a theatrical scene

The other effect is simpler, and more cruel. By remaining on the same plane, Leone forces you to see the distance. Ten meters of asphalt between two men who haven't spoken to each other for thirty-five years, and a telephone wire to bridge it. Editing would have brought their faces closer. The continuous shot leaves them separated

How they filmed it

The setup is as simple as a seasoned pro. A dolly, a dolly mounted on rails and equipped with an arm, moves towards the sign, frames the shot through the window, rises, widening the view onto the street, then descends to end in a close-up of Noodles in the booth. No Steadicam (a handheld camera stabilized by an articulated harness, invented in 1975 and already commonplace at the time), no construction crane: a classic, slow-motion camera movement, the difficulty of which lies entirely in maintaining a constant speed. A slowdown at the apex of the parabola and the ritualistic effect collapses

Technically, Tonino Delli Colli shot the film in 35mm on Arriflex cameras with spherical lenses, framed in 1.85:1 for theatrical release. This was a notable choice: Leone had shot Once Upon a Time in the West in Techniscope, an anamorphic process resulting in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. For urban America, he abandoned the panoramic format of the Western and tightened the frame. The narrower frame makes the vertical movement of the dolly much more noticeable; you can feel the camera rising because there's less sky.

The scene's origin is autobiographical, and Leone recounted it himself. He had met Harry Grey, the former gangster and author of * The Hoods*, in a Manhattan bar run by an obese, affable owner—exactly the model for Fat Moe. The place, both relaxing and secretive, served as the blueprint for the 1968 version of the bar. And from this encounter, he directly drew the sequence: Noodles returns to New York and calls Fat Moe from a booth outside the bar, which, according to him, was "exactly like how we met Harry Grey." The film's most elaborate shot thus reenacts a memory of scouting locations.

The setting raises a question that the production never fully resolved. Fat Moe's neighborhood was filmed in Williamsburg, on South 6th and South 8th Streets in Brooklyn. Leone had rejected the sets offered to him for The Godfather Part II because he wanted depth, several city blocks, and a view of a large bridge. But the same block was also recreated by set designer Carlo Simi on Via delle Messi d'Oro in Rome, and other "New York" streets in the film were shot in Montreal due to a lack of intact period facades. No source consulted specifies which of these sets accommodates this particular shot.

Then there's the lighting, which does half the work. Delli Colli illuminates the film in chiaroscuro, with very localized warm sources in deep blacks. His rule in this film: light never reveals anything good. From the very first scene, a period lamp lit in a dark room serves only to point to a woman who is about to be shot. Here, the illuminated window of the bar is the only point of warmth on a dark street, and the camera moves away from it to find a man in a booth. The movement is literally from light to shadow

One final detail of the mise-en-scène deserves to be noted: the telephone is the central object of the film. It is a call that triggers the catastrophe; Noodles denounces his friends to the police, causing their deaths. It is a ringing phone that structures the entire opening. Making his only single-take shot a phone call scene is not a coincidence of the script. Leone places his only uninterrupted camera movement around the one object his character has never managed to hang up

What to observe when reviewing it

• At the very beginning of the shot, through the window : Moe dismisses his last customers before the phone even rings. The shot starts with the end of a shift, not with a wait, which is what makes the call intrusive.

• At the apex of the parabola, in the upper third of the frame : the street appears in its entirety, almost empty. This is the only moment in the shot where we see the 1968 neighborhood in its entirety, and it is unrecognizable compared to the teeming streets of the 1922 sequences.

• In the final seconds, on De Niro's face : the cut to the previous shot. The film has just aged Noodles thirty-five years in a reflection of glass, to the opening notes of "Yesterday." The close-up of the phone booth is the first time we see him old in full light.

Did you know?

• The film contains virtually no other long takes. The Caen Film Club identifies only two other notable camera movements in nearly four hours: the forward tracking shot of Deborah and Noodles dancing in the restaurant on the coast, and the very long backward tracking shot from the Miami hotel to the beach, which ends with Max in the middle of the seagulls.

• This shot references another Leone film. The same source compares this camera parabola to Jill's arrival in Flagstone in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), where a tracking shot follows Claudia Cardinale along the railway tracks before the camera rises above the station roof to reveal the entire town. Sixteen years separate the two shots; it's the same gesture, transposed from the desert to Brooklyn.

• The shift to 1968 is triggered by a single Beatles song. An essentially instrumental version of "Yesterday" accompanies Noodles' gaze as he looks towards the Coney Island mural at the bus station. We hear a single sung word, " suddenly," and the cut reveals an aged De Niro in the same spot.

• A telephone ringing occurs twenty-two times. In the opening sequence, the ringing heard in the opium den continues off-screen through at least five different locations, before merging with that of a telephone in close-up which a hand picks up without interrupting it.

• Leone wanted a bridge in the shot. He was offered the locations Godfather Part II, specifically the Lower East Side. He turned them down: he demanded depth, several city blocks, and a view of one of New York's major bridges. The Manhattan Bridge became the image for the poster.

• Tonino Delli Colli photographed all three "Once Upon a Time" films. He also shot the last three Fellini films, Annaud's The Name of the Rose , and Benigni's Life Is Beautiful.

Sources

• Jean-Luc Lacuve, "Once Upon a Time in America", Caen Film Club, June 15, 2011

• Anthony Perrotta, “Homoeroticism in Once Upon a Time in America ”, Drunk Monkeys, June 2022 (Sergio Leone’s remarks on his meeting with Harry Grey)

• Once Upon a Time in America (Italian Import) 4K UHD Review, The Digital Bits, January 2026 (shooting characteristics: 35mm, Arriflex, spherical lenses, 1.85:1)

• Midwest Film Journal, “Class of 1984: Once Upon a Time in America” (1933-1968 shift and use of “Yesterday”)

• Larsen On Film, "Once Upon a Time in America" ​​(bell ring montage, lighting design by Delli Colli)

• Wikipedia (EN), Once Upon a Time in America and Tonino Delli Colli (technical credits, filming dates, budget, pictorial references)

• Movie Tourist / Movie-Locations, location guides (Williamsburg, Via delle Messi d'Oro, Montreal)

• Kinolab, sequence sheets forOnce Upon a Time in America (timing markers)

Read also

• Real long takes vs fake long takes: the guide to spotting everything - Fat Moe's shot is a real one, without trickery or hidden cuts: here's how to tell the difference in any scene.

• Why the duration of a sequence shot changes everything - a long shot doesn't need to be endless to be impactful; this one is proof of that.

• How to achieve a perfect sequence shot without any cuts - preparing a dolly shot, step by step.

• What is a sequence shot? Definition and key points - the distinction between a long shot and a sequence shot, and the role of the camera setup.