Introduction
The themes of jealousy, ardor, complex character, conspiracies, deceit, fear of power, and much more hide the topics of deep love and affection in Shakespeare’s play The Winter’s Tale and Leon’s film Once Upon a Time in America. It can be seen in the depressed state of Leontes, who, through his foolishness, lost all his loved ones, or in the tragedy of David, Noodles, who was forced to flee from his past. By the end of the work, the reader is presented with someone who repents his deeds and cannot escape the past. Thus, the same themes exist in Shakespeare’s tragicomedy The Winter’s Tale and Leon’s film Once Upon a Time in America: love and friendship, loyalty and betrayal, and power and despotism.
Background and Short Summary
The Winter’s Tale is a late play by William Shakespeare, first published in 1623 as part of the First Folio as a comedy. The source of The Winter’s Tale was Robert Greene’s Pandosto, or The Triumph of Time (1588) (Miller 100). Leontes, king of Sicily, suspects his pregnant wife Hermione of treason with his friend Polyxenes, king of Bohemia. He orders Polyxenes to be poisoned, but he manages to escape. Meanwhile, Leontes imprisons his wife, whom he does not forgive, and remains confident in his innocence even after the accusations are dropped by the Oracles and, in general, by everyone around him. As a result, the young son of Leontes and Hermione dies (Shakespeare 99).
Meanwhile, Hermione’s daughter, whom she gave birth to while in prison, is left on the Bohemian coast, where she is found by a shepherd and raised as her daughter (Shakespeare 109). Sixteen years later, the son of Polyxene falls in love with the girl, and she returns to her homeland. Leontes repents, and this changes everyone’s attitude toward him; he deserves a reward for his remorse, and Hermione returns to him.
Once Upon a Time in America is a gangster drama film directed by Sergio Leone. The film was first released in 1984 and is partly based on Harry Grey’s autobiographical book The Hoods. The story develops around a small group of friends from families of Jewish immigrants who moved to New York for a better life but found only poverty and cruelty there (Once Upon a Time in America).
While still children, the main characters decided to cut a path to a better life by illegal means: theft, fraud, and then murder. The friends swore an oath to protect each other at the cost of their own lives, thus highlighting their bond. Despite the abundance of blood, betrayal, and power, they wanted to preserve their values: friendship, duty, and justice. Many years later, they had to fulfill their oath.
Similarities
Fairytale Events
In The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare, the truth of life is visible: good and evil, both sad and joyful. Only this truth does not arise in a picture that consistently depicts causes and effects but in a combination of surprises and accidents (Nareerak 495). For example, the return of Perdita to her homeland in Sicily, or even the falling in love with her son Polixen with a simple girl who eventually turned out to be a princess.
Interestingly, in Once Upon a Time in America, the viewer is initially faced with linking the various episodes into one picture. The most crucial surprise in Shakespeare’s play and Leon’s picture is the return to life of the two closest people to the main characters. In The Winter’s Tale, this occurs when “Hermione descends” (Shakespeare 233).
In Once Upon a Time in America, Noodles’ fate crosses him again with his long-dead friend Max (Once Upon a Time in America, 03:26:28). The theme of crime and punishment is solved in The Winter’s Tale in the same way as in Once Upon a Time in America. A person who succumbs to a bad passion pays for the crime with mental anguish, for nature in him revolts against the evil he has committed.
Like a fairy tale, Shakespeare’s work is replete with fabulous, incredible events that are difficult to match with reality. For example, this is the imaginary death of Hermione, who hid for sixteen years from a jealous husband, the miraculous salvation of their daughter Perdita, and more. Nevertheless, despite the fabulousness of the events in Shakespeare’s play, the exact parallel is present in the gangster film Once Upon a Time in America, where the closest friend of the protagonist, Max, is miraculously resurrected by the end of the picture (Once Upon a Time in America). Both Hermione and Max, although for different reasons, become bystanders at some point in the works.
Playing With Time
The theme of time is also present in The Winter’s Tale, and it is a powerful healing force. There is no time sequence in the play: after the third act, the action breaks off and resumes in the fourth act, sixteen years later: “O’er sixteen years, and leave the growth untried // Of that wide gap, since it is in my power” (Shakespeare 119). This is about the fact that time has passed, and time can create everything: it tests everyone, bringing joy and sorrow, good and evil; it can overthrow the law and, in a single hour, approve or destroy the custom.
Time plays a vital role in Once Upon a Time in America, although the released version was cut by an hour and a half and recut in chronological order. The film’s narration in the full version does not imply the chronology of events. It creates a mystery for the viewer, as they first see an aged Noodles arrive in town 35 years after the events. That is followed by a chain of memories, interrupted by the modern timeline (Once Upon a Time in America, 37:00, 01:29:35). Such a show can be difficult to perceive, but the whole picture is built after watching it.
The film’s main characters, Noodles, Max, Patsy, and Oblique, create their gang, including all the nuances and patrol of the police. The construction of the plot timelines makes it possible to feel the gangsters and consider the share of romanticism, devotion, and respect in the criminal souls (Rice and Mündel 212). The period reflected at this time evokes positive emotions in the viewer. Even if the characters have adult plans, decisions begin to show logic, but youthful naivety and the desire to ‘have here and now’ will play a cruel joke on them.
Thanks to this flashback, it is possible to answer the questions posed by the film’s exposition. Now, the viewer knows who started how, their prospects for the future, and what eventually happened to the friendly team. The next storyline is shortly after the guys who have already taken place have power.
Differences
The main difference between the play and the film is the latter’s detailed brutality. Shootouts and bloody scenes divide this tape into one part, one side of the criminal life. In Shakespeare, none of the characters kill anyone, and each death occurs either by chance or as a result of a curse or experience. At the same time, the film contrasts with romantic scenes, feelings of love through mountains of corpses and blood, dirty money, and violence to show power. However, female characters are present in both works for contrast but play an essential role in establishing the weakness and affection of strong and cruel personalities.
At the time of the film’s release, the gangster genre, thanks to the efforts of film critics in the wake of the success of the Godfather trilogy and many imitations, was not only revived in all its former glory. It has become a metaphor for justifying authoritarianism and the cult of power. Gangsters were presented as carriers of a specific code of honor, as family people who were forced to defend their loved ones and friends themselves in conditions where the law was powerless.
The history of the gangster clan was presented as the history of the country as a whole, as an epic about great deeds and crimes. Shed blood was justified by reasonable goals when they tried to accuse the American generals who burned entire villages in North Vietnam of genocide. The rehabilitation of people of honor with ‘dirty hands’ runs like a red thread through all the gangster cinema of the 1980s (Sánchez-Escalonilla 157). It is a metaphor for justifying authoritarianism and paternalism, no matter what methods are used for the sake of common interests.
That is a difference between the two works: gangsters, according to the laws of the genre, come to the dark side to protect their loved ones. As the king of Sicily, Leontes represents the evil that people close to him, and even ordinary people, suffer from, such as the shepherd who found Leontes’ daughter, Perdita. The whole play of Shakespeare is imbued with the spirit of the people (Grigore 43). A despotic ruler and merciful citizens who help those who have suffered from the harsh actions of the king. Shakespeare emphasizes that good comes from those who live according to love and morality and do not try to get it through force.
Conclusion
The idea of ever-flowing time in the works is not connected with the concept of frailty but only with constant variability, transitions from good to evil and backward, from evil to good. The world is changing, and in these constant changes is the guarantee of a possible victory for good or atonement for mistakes made. The main characters of the works, Leontes and Noodles, sacrifice everything: their affections, friendship, and love. In the end, left alone, betraying and losing everything they had, they understand that the most valuable thing in life was what they either laughed at in their youth and despised, like Noodles, or did not appreciate at all, like Leontes. Money and power have become the engines of the drama, the things that have led to tragedy, and the one who owns these resources cannot always dispose of them fairly.
Works Cited
Grigore, Claudia. “Healing Music in Pericles, the Winter’s Tale and the Tempest.” Romanian Journal of English Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, 2019, pp. 42–53. Web.
Miller, Christopher W. “Interpreted Statues: Collapse of Femininity and Psychotic Denial of Incest in the Winter’s Tale.” The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review, vol. 41, no. 2, 2018, pp. 100–107. Web.
Nareerak, Pradit. “William Shakespeare: Reflections on the Four Sublime States of Mind in the Tempest.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, 2023, pp. 494–500. Web.
Once Upon a Time in America. Directed by Sergio Leone, Warner Bros., Titanus, 1984.
Rice, Carla, and Ingrid Mündel. “Story-Making as Methodology: Disrupting Dominant Stories through Multimedia Storytelling.” Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne De Sociologie, vol. 55, no. 2, 2018, pp. 211–231. Web.
Sánchez-Escalonilla, Antonio. “Absolving the American Guilt: Forgiveness and Purification in Clint Eastwood’s Cinema.” Church, Communication and Culture, vol. 6, no. 2, 2021, pp. 157–174. Web.
Shakespeare, William. “The Winter’s Tale.” Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d. Web.