Goodfellas (18.)
Directed by Martin Scorsese. 1990
Starring Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco and Paul Sorvino. 146 mins. Back in cinemas as part of the BFI Scorsese season at the Southbank in support of he release of Silence. Part of Warner Brothers Iconic Moments Collection.
Seeing Goodfellas for the first time – opening day matinee, Screen on the Green – is one of those cinema trips I'll never forget. It was one of those rare occasions you see a new film and realise that you have seen something monumental, a classic. Usually you work that out a few years later. With this you knew straight off that it was going to change things.
Scorsese was coming off a scratchy decade. Following Raging Bull, the eighties had been a bit of struggle. He made great films that failed to connect with the public (King of Comedy); and flawed films that failed to connect with the public (Last Temptation of Christ.) Goodfellas blasted him back to per-eminence. After a decade of shaky connections, this was something he got completely.
From the very first moment you can feel how totally in his element he is. Everything is in sync: the performances, the music, the camera movements, the narration(s.) A great early example of this is the scene in the bar when De Niro suddenly notices that Henry Hill (Liotta) is confabbing with a potential business opportunity. Immediately he's up and out of his chair, and as he does so the camera rushes forward to meet his face. The concertina effect of these two simultaneous but opposing moves generate a flash of energy and communicates to us his ceaseless craving for action and opportunity.
The sea change created by the film was to pull Italian mobsters down a peg or two and knock The Godfather off its turret as the template for gangster films. Prior to this gangsters had generally been romantic figures, lost souls who represented America’s loss of innocence. De Niro’s mob in Once Upon A Time in America were venal thugs and sexual predators but placed in an epic, majestic sweep, and their petty little betrayals were given tragic status.
De Niro’s Goodfellas are venal thugs, petty betrayers and entirely without honour or dignity. They are psychotic Del Boys. After Goodfellas, Italian mobsters would never be sentimentalized again. At the time, this felt like a great deglamourisation of gangsters. In fact this, and its closest progeny The Sopranos, were re-glamourisations. In the 80s the successes enjoyed by the FBI against organized crime meant the old gangster mythos wouldn’t hold. There had been too many TV documentaries showing the squalid truth about the life. Scorsese, with his breathless energy and bravado, showed how you take the ugly truth and still make it desirable. Pig mobsters could be every bit as compelling as noble mobsters, Tony Soprano could be as precious to us as Don Corleone. It was inspired piece of reinvention for the mob, and indicative of how Scorsese works. Give him a scumbag and he’ll knock up a cathedral to them.
Directed by Martin Scorsese. 1990
Starring Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco and Paul Sorvino. 146 mins. Back in cinemas as part of the BFI Scorsese season at the Southbank in support of he release of Silence. Part of Warner Brothers Iconic Moments Collection.
Seeing Goodfellas for the first time – opening day matinee, Screen on the Green – is one of those cinema trips I'll never forget. It was one of those rare occasions you see a new film and realise that you have seen something monumental, a classic. Usually you work that out a few years later. With this you knew straight off that it was going to change things.
Scorsese was coming off a scratchy decade. Following Raging Bull, the eighties had been a bit of struggle. He made great films that failed to connect with the public (King of Comedy); and flawed films that failed to connect with the public (Last Temptation of Christ.) Goodfellas blasted him back to per-eminence. After a decade of shaky connections, this was something he got completely.
From the very first moment you can feel how totally in his element he is. Everything is in sync: the performances, the music, the camera movements, the narration(s.) A great early example of this is the scene in the bar when De Niro suddenly notices that Henry Hill (Liotta) is confabbing with a potential business opportunity. Immediately he's up and out of his chair, and as he does so the camera rushes forward to meet his face. The concertina effect of these two simultaneous but opposing moves generate a flash of energy and communicates to us his ceaseless craving for action and opportunity.
The sea change created by the film was to pull Italian mobsters down a peg or two and knock The Godfather off its turret as the template for gangster films. Prior to this gangsters had generally been romantic figures, lost souls who represented America’s loss of innocence. De Niro’s mob in Once Upon A Time in America were venal thugs and sexual predators but placed in an epic, majestic sweep, and their petty little betrayals were given tragic status.
De Niro’s Goodfellas are venal thugs, petty betrayers and entirely without honour or dignity. They are psychotic Del Boys. After Goodfellas, Italian mobsters would never be sentimentalized again. At the time, this felt like a great deglamourisation of gangsters. In fact this, and its closest progeny The Sopranos, were re-glamourisations. In the 80s the successes enjoyed by the FBI against organized crime meant the old gangster mythos wouldn’t hold. There had been too many TV documentaries showing the squalid truth about the life. Scorsese, with his breathless energy and bravado, showed how you take the ugly truth and still make it desirable. Pig mobsters could be every bit as compelling as noble mobsters, Tony Soprano could be as precious to us as Don Corleone. It was inspired piece of reinvention for the mob, and indicative of how Scorsese works. Give him a scumbag and he’ll knock up a cathedral to them.
