Goodfellas and The Godfather saga tower above their competition and deserve their place in the pantheon of American crime pictures.
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The 1930s were the Golden Age of gangster films. Following the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, and the rise of organized crime in America, Hollywood of the thirties was quick to capitalize on the allure of the mobster lifestyle, all the while making sure to show that good triumphed over evil. Movies like "Little Caesar" (1930), "The Public Enemy" (1931), and "Scarface" (1932) elevated the hoodlum to near-iconic status, creating antiheroes of lowlifes.
The trend diminished through the 1940s, and by the 50s and 60s America's obsession with mob life seemed to have settled down. Then Francis Coppola resurrected the genre with perhaps the most important gangster picture of them all, "The Godfather," and suddenly the mobster was in again, opening the door to a succession of gangland features.
Which brings us to Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" from 1990. No stranger to filming life on the streets of New York, Scorsese had already made the celebrated movies "Mean Streets" (1973), "Taxi Driver" (1976), and "Raging Bull" (1980) before coming to "Goodfellas." His next movie seemed like a natural extension of his vision of the little man fighting his way up. It also touched off the expected comparisons to Coppola's first two "Godfather" films and arguments about which ones were "best" or most honest depictions of the mob world. Such comparisons, of course, seem frivolous today, since "Goodfellas" was always meant to complement, not supplant, "The Godfather" saga. Where Coppola showed us life at the top of the gangster food chain--the big bosses and their lieutenants in glamorized, romanticized fashion--Scorsese presents us with a picture of the working gangster, the underling, the guy whose job it is carry out the orders at the street level, always hoping to move up the train of command.
"Goodfellas" is an adjunct, a supplement, to the "Godfather" stories, providing us with two very distinct viewpoints on two very different areas of American gangsterism. A person may certainly value one film more than the other and make a case why one is more enjoyable on a personal level, but to suggest that one or another film is somehow "better," historically, stylistically, or cinematically, seems a fatuous enterprise for whiling away time, and little else.
"Goodfellas," like "The Godfather, Parts 1 and 2," is both a seminal film, in that it, too, was original in its way and generated a number of imitations, and a culminating film, in that it climaxes the whole gangster movement in the annals of Hollywood moviemaking. "Goodfellas" and "The Godfather" saga tower above their competition and deserve their place in the pantheon of American crime pictures.
Scorsese cowrote the screenplay for "Goodfellas" with Nicholas Pileggi, based on Pileggi's book, "Wise Guy," about a real-life former gangster, Henry Hill. I know "Henry Hill" doesn't sound like much of a colorful name for a mobster, but Hill was never a "made man," either, the highest honor the Mob could give you. In order to be a full-fledged member of the Mafia, a man had to be 100% Italian-Sicilian, and Hill wasn't. Hill was an underling, but pretty high up in the ranks, nonetheless. Incidentally, the term "Mafia" is never used in the film.
The opening scene begins in New York, 1970, with a display of brutality that establishes the tone of the picture. Then we flash back to 1955, as the narrator, Hill, tells us, "As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." He's a kid not doing well in school, with an unhappy set of parents, and an abusive father. He looks down the street and sees the adult hoods hanging out and ruling the roost, and finds there a lifestyle he wants to emulate. Gangsters were Hill's heroes; they could do anything they wanted. They could get the best tables at restaurants and night clubs. They could double park and not worry about a ticket! Being a gangster meant being somebody, belonging to something. To Hill, who gets involved with the gangsters in his neighborhood early on, being a regular, workaday guy is being a schmuck.
As a teen, Hill becomes a flunky for the Mob and meets two friends who would continue at his side for the next thirty years: Jimmy Conway and Tommy DeVito. Jimmy is one of the most-feared hit men in the Organization and a hijacker to boot. Hill describes him as "the kind of guy who rooted for the bad guys in the movies." Jimmy teaches the young Hill two important lessons in life: "Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut." Tommy, on the other hand, is a psychopath and a really scary, unpredictable, merciless guy. None of them have any compulsions about committing murder.
The movie follows Hill's story from 1955 back to 1970 and then on to 1988, where he finally gives it up, goes into the FBI's Witness Protection Program, and starts pointing fingers. That is apparently where Pileggi and his book come in. Wives, girlfriends, drugs, food, paranoia, hats, and the FBI complicate Henry's life to the point of no return.
The cast could not be bettered. Ray Liotta plays Hill as a not-so-innocent abroad who learns quickly how to serve and survive in the Mob. It's easy for us to accept how a fellow of his upbringing in his environment could succumb to the dark side. Robert De Niro plays Jimmy in one of the actor's now patented bad-guy performances. Yet De Niro's Jimmy is not entirely malicious; amoral, surely, but not without compassion or judgment. Joe Pesci's Tommy, however, is an authentic madman, a person who would as soon shoot you as look at you. He's part crazy, part stupid, and part pure evil, but he engenders loyalty in his two friends. Pesci won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his performance. Lorraine Bracco plays Hill's wife, who sticks with him through most of his career in crime. And Paul Sorvino plays Paul Cicero, the neighborhood Mob boss.
Part of Scorsese's genius is in his storytelling style. In the hands of many of other directors, "Goodfellas" might have been just another crime thriller. Instead, we get a riveting two-and-a-half hours of gritty detail and personal insight into the life of some genuine people. Creepy, despicable, often degenerate people, to be sure, but people we can understand, people we can believe exist. Combine the nature of the characters with Scorsese's continually probing camera, his chunky, chapter-by-chapter delivery, his nonlinear, flashback narration, and his use of period music, and you get an almost documentary-like testament to the lower-echelon gangster milieu.
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