Once Upon a Time in America [no spoilers]

I was on eBay looking to buy this, and I saw two versions. An uncut version and a regular version.

One is like 150 minutes and the other is 229 minutes.

Without spoilers, which one is the better one to pick up?

The near four hours long version. It's a long film, but it cannot work any shorter. The shorter one is the Americanized version that appeared in theaters that put the narrative in order, and took much of the creativity out of the film and even created errors in character development. I suggest you get this DVD.

I have this, but I have a question. Why is it two discs?

It's a very good DVD. The film is amazing, but there's plenty of neat little extras. And the extended version makes the story much easier to understand and get into. The only complaint I have is the fact it's soooooooooo long. I've only had time to watch it one time. But it's well worth a purchase. It's one of my favorite films. Sergio Leone was a terrific director.

Wasn't this the only Americanized film that he did?

1) The movie is so long it's put on two disks.

2) The short version is Americanized, not the long one, although the version he loved was SIX hours long. (ten hours of footage was filmed).

But no, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly as well as "Once Upon a Time in the West" went through cuts to appeal to America. Both have been released with their footage back together, the first being a recent SE, and the latter being a two disk DVD.

The movie was beyond my expetations. The only reason i bought it was because the people on this message board commented to positively about it. I was so impressed with the musical score of the film, I bought the soundtrack off someone who was selling it on ebay, from Spain