How Sergio Leone establishes and develops the thriller genre conventions within mise-en-scene.

Two locations that are within the opening few minutes of once upon a time in America that establish the thriller genre are the dimly lit, wet street and the old style lift and the shaft. The wet street which is dimly lit is used to show the dark side of a thriller and can produce a menacing shot for which the audience feels overpowered and scared. Also the lift would be used because a low angle shot can make the lift look menacing and dangerous and makes it out to be a symbolism of death and pain.

Two archetypes that Sergio Leone used in the film are those of mobsters on the rise in New York and those of gangsters who liked hurting and killing people. These archetypes are used in most generic gangster a mobster films and they are the some of the most generic archetypes. He also uses Eve as the generic archetype for a femme fatale. Normally femme fatales are used in most noir and mobster thrillers. The name Eve relates to the biblical character Eve who is mischievous and daring and in the film Sergio shows her to be someone who is a bit like that because of how she enters the room carelessly and not checking to see if anyone is in there and how she just casually draws back the sheet of the bed to see the outline of a body. This shows that Sergio was trying to create a link between the two characters and try portray his character Eve out to be the same as the biblical character. Another archetype that is used in quite a lot of thrillers is death. Death is used a lot to create a suspense and chilling feeling of seeing a dead body on the ground. Another thriller that uses death well to create suspense and a nerve racking feeling is the movie ‘Time Lapse’. The killing of the friend by the husband creates a plot twist and gives a chilling feeling to the audience because you don’t expect that to happen.

The film is considered an example of a film noir. In the opening scene when Eve walks in through the door it is black and the only lighting is on her pearl necklace and part of her face. Pearls are mean to symbolise tears which are related to death. The effect of this is to make her seem mysterious. The use of white on black shows that it is a noir film because white on black is a generic convention and a generic archetype of film noir is the use of black which is used to be mysterious and also to symbolise death and pain.

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