At 30 years old, Goodfellas remains scorsese’s great gatsby!
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Goodfellas’ has endured like a fine Italian wine. Yet, it has often been mistakenly informed as a perfect ideal of masculine values. Instead, it is Scorsese continuing a critique of the American Dream, over 60 years from when F. Scott Fitzgerald started it. Much like how pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio raising his glass are seen as an exemplary suaveness by some, ‘Goodfellas’ poster of its three principle actors, crossed armed and stoic, whilst standing over a dead body has often been mistakenly as an endorsement of a certain type of masculinity. But the film offers something far more complex than many of its surface l
The story of Henry Hill’s (Ray Liotta) rise in the mob world of New Jersey during the mid-late 20th century has aged supremely well and remains Scorsese’s masterpiece. From the excellent performances of Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Lorraine Bracco to its unique use of popular tunes from the period, there is little negative one can say about it.
Scorsese presents an evolution in his protagonists from his preceding films. Anti-heroes have existed for a long time in cinema, especially in Scorsese’s work. ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Raging Bull’ both featured protagonist with deeply troubling moral philosophies. Yet, unlike the former’s Travis Bickle or the latter’s Jake LaMotta, Hill relishes in his crimes. Bickle and LaMotta commit their misdeeds not because they enjoy it but because they feel they have too. Bickle thinks of himself as a vigilante ridding the world of evil, whilst LaMotta’s actions are persisted by a false ideal of remaining the “champ”.
Conversely, Hill knows that the mafioso lifestyle is not the ideal American pursuit, but it is the one most pleasurable to him. “How could I go back to school and pledge allegiance to the flag and sit through good government bullshit” Hill remarks. He achieves the American Dream, with relatively little friction along the way. He has freedom, prosperity, and success with little punishment for his misdeeds. Compared to his contemporaries, he gets off ‘scot free’, only having to endure a mediocre life as an “average nobody” during the film’s final moments. He is more empathetic than De Niro and Pesci’s characters, but not by much. As him and Pesci’s Tommy DeVito race away in a truck firing their guns in the air, they cackle away like bank robbers in a Western. As Hill says of De Niro’s Jimmy Conway, he was “the kind of guy that rooted for bad guys in the movies.”
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This is all further brought to life by the film’s excellent cinematography. Unlike Francis Ford Coppola’s work in ‘The Godfather’ which is lit in darkness and secrecy, Scorsese, and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus’s is filled with colour and extravagance. Whenever violence occurs, there is often a glowing red light, as if the door to Hell has been opened. This is not the Corleone family; they want their crimes to be out there in the public eye. Furthermore, Richard Bruno’s costumes are fantastically showy, and Kristi Zea’s production design has a certain gaudiness that fits the excessive lifestyle perfectly.
It is also a film of constant noise: insults being thrown around, the pop jukebox soundtrack, the brutal violence. Despite their closed off lifestyle, it feels as noisy as a warzone. Yet, whenever silence comes in ‘Goodfellas’, it always serves a greater thematic purpose. After the brilliant helicopter sequence in the last act (one of editor Thelma Schoonmaker’s absolute best), the music stops, and the traded insults come to a close. The real world has finally shown its true face!
Even more famously does Scorsese show this in Pesci’s “funny how?” scene. The whole world seems to stop, with every minor cast member and extra looking in Henry and Tommy’s direction as if Liotta’s world is about to come crashing down on him. It is a great insight into showing that anything said at the wrong point could cost one their life (as later shown in the Billy Batts sequence).
Little has been spoken of the racial politics of the film, but it remains a key in understanding the film. Tommy himself is a hypocrite, a man who feels racially belittled when his Jewish date has reservations about going on a date due to her “Italian prejudice”. Yet he gets angry when a different date expresses sexual feelings towards African American entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. Much like ‘The Sopranos’ (another mob drama in which its racial politics are also criminally under looked), it represents men trapped in another world, unaware of the change in social politics. Hill’s wife Karen observes that they never met anyone of the mob lifestyle.
‘Goodfellas’ remains a movie for the ages. But it should be noted that is not an endorsement of the mafia lifestyle set by its protagonists. Its one where the extravagance and showiness exist within a certain interior world. And that lifestyle can never last forever.