Graves and Images: Once Upon a Time in America and the Unmaking of Jewish Memory

The Lower East Side has long served as a “sacralized spot” of Jewish memory, in Hasia Diner's words. But in Once Upon a Time in America, Sergio Leone—neither Jewish nor American—demystifies the images and performances that went into the sacralization of this space, and in so doing radically questions the politics of memory that gathered around it.