Federico Fellini, a co-author of the treatment, was the very first person Salvatores encountered at Cinecittà at the outset of shooting his debut feature. Fellini was filming And the Ship Sails On and asked Salvatores what he did for a living. When Salvatores answered "director," Fellini laid a hand on his shoulder and said "Courage!"
At the time Fellini and Pinelli drafted the treatment that Gabriele Salvatores later used as the basis for the screenplay, they had not yet visited the United States. Salvatores opted to portray New York in a deliberately less‑than‑fully realistic manner in order to convey its sense of idealisation.
Once Upon a Time in America, evoked by the iconic shot of the Brooklyn Bridge, is among director Gabriele Salvatores' favourite films.
When a fortune-teller tells the young protagonist, Carmine, that he has no luck line on his hand, he cuts one into his palm with a knife. This is an homage to Hugo Pratt's comic-book hero, Corto Maltese, who does likewise.
The line "Where are you from? Africa?" mirrors a line in Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers, which likewise explores the theme of migration.
The film’s opening section, which closely follows the treatment written by Fellini and Pinelli, is shot in a neorealist style. Later on, it features a screening of Roberto Rossellini’s Paisà, a neorealist masterpiece to which Fellini himself contributed. In Napoli - New York, the picture’s success in America is set against the contempt with which Italian immigrants were received.
The film draws on an early treatment by Federico Fellini and Tullio Pinelli.
