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.