We're talking a very cultivated people, but I found as cultivated as they were, they were uninformed about the personages who weren't American. They knew everything about America, but much less about other countries.

The American public is a very specialized public. The reason it is taken as a realistic film is because inside the fable, I've put that kind of reality in. And it could easily be called, instead of Once Upon a Time in America, Once Upon a Time There Was a Certain Kind of Cinema. Because it was also an homage to cinema.

When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite.

I realized than an author cannot also be a producer.

We're talking a very cultivated people, but I found as cultivated as they were, they were uninformed about the personages who weren't American. They knew everything about America, but much less about other countries.

It is clear that the vehicle of the western was a very interesting vehicle for me to contraband some of my ideas.

When I used Claudia [Cardinale] for example, in Once Upon a Time in the West, she represented the birth of American matriarchy. Because women had enormous weight in America.