GoodFellas, the 1990 gangster film directed by Martin Scorsese, has achieved legendary status as one of the best mobster movies of all time. A classic example of Scorsese’s signature energetic style and deep, abiding sense of mood, GoodFellas examines the life and times of gangster Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, and his friends Jimmy the Gent and Tommy DeVito, played by Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, and their rise and fall through the world of organized crime. What is most fascinating is the use of point of view and perspective through editing to tell the story of these characters through a flashy, ostentatious and constantly changing timeline, to point out just how thrilling the mob life as well as its incredible danger and treachery. Through the use of cinematography, music and the performances of its casting, GoodFellas achieves its goal of making its characters seem thrilling and exciting, and then pulling the rug out from under the audience to make us see the terrifying people beneath.
As GoodFellas focuses primarily on the three main characters of Henry, Jimmy and Tommy, the film’s main plot and character arcs revolve around this trio and their friendship. The point of view character, Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill, is the ruggedly handsome and charismatic center of the friendship, an incredibly ambitious mobster who seeks to go to the top of the organized crime world. In a lot of ways, Henry sees the mob life as the only one he could see himself living. This is seen in the opening scene, when the three characters are going off to bury a body they have in the trunk. While Scorsese stages this scene in pitch blackness, with three people in dressed-down clothes going out to the isolated desert to perform this dirty deed, this mood is starkly contrasted with the sense of humor of Henry’s voiceover (a constant throughout the film). When the scene eventually ends with a freeze frame of a low angle shot of Henry angrily closing the trunk, this violent image is juxtaposed with Henry’s cheery, “For as long as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster.” This scene quickly establishes the tone of the film and the attitude of the main characters – hyper-masculine tough guys who are willing to do all manner of unsavory things in order to secure their own money and power.
Robert De Niro’s Jimmy the Gent is the most pragmatic and level-headed of the three, though he is not without his own moments of rage and capriciousness. In one powerful scene, a mobster friend of Jimmy’s gleefully shows off the fancy new car he just purchased. “What the matter with you?” Jimmy repeats ad nauseam, jabbing a finger at his friend and yelling at him for making such a public and risky purchase. “You’re gonna get us all fuckin’ pinched. What are you, stupid?” As Jimmy’s intensity increases, Scorsese cuts between close shots of Jimmy and his friend in a shot-reverse shot to make him seem more imposing in the frame; in shots featuring the friend, the back of Jimmy’s head looms in the frame to make it feel claustrophobic. This intense scene is juxtaposed with Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” one of many instances of Scorsese contrasting intense confrontations between crime lords to cheery music befitting the period. Jimmy’s intense eyes, no-nonsense attitude and repetition of key phrases makes him a simply principled gangster, disinterested in the kind of high-profile lifestyle Henry and Tommy want to lead and focused on simply keeping the business running, no matter who has to die in the process.
On the other side of the coin from Jimmy’s low-key practicality is the volatile, insecure Tommy DeVito, who is much more like to explode in bursts of violence and loud-mouthed vulgarity. In the iconic “Funny how?” scene, Tommy rattles off a humorous story, but when Henry offhandedly mentions that he’s “a funny guy,” Tommy’s whole attitude changes and he presses Henry on the way in which he’s ‘funny.’ Feeling like Henry is looking down on him, he says, “I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you?” in an accusing manner, leaving Henry to have to cautiously defend himself and mince words around Tommy. Because of Tommy’s height and insecurities, Tommy lashes out at the slightest provocation, hoping to garner respect through fear and violence. Eventually, he lashes out at another man who approaches their table, smashing his head in with a glass bottle, then getting up and challenging the room. Scorsese’s framing of Tommy in a split diopter shot next to a tall man in a Hawaiian shirt and lei visually hammers home Tommy’s inherent fears that people view him as a ‘clown’ and don’t take him seriously.
Viewed together, the dynamic of Henry, Jimmy and Tommy help to sell the balance between excitement and fear, violence and success and more that exemplified the mobster lifestyle in the mid-20th century. Henry exists on a continuum between the boisterous, hypermasculine behavior of the Tommy and the practicalities of Jimmy, bouncing between these two extremes in equal measure. Overall, the first half of the movie shows these characters enjoying the high life, buying expensive suits and wielding their power as high-profile players in the mob community, only to undercut this success with violence and tragedy by the end of the film. In the end, Jimmy serves time in prison, Tommy is killed, and Henry ends up in Witness Protection in a stale, ordinary middle-class life he cannot stand, making him “an average nobody, a shnook.” With the fates of these characters, Scorsese takes the audience on a journey to make them relate to and root for the success of criminals, thus complicating the audience’s moral compass through the likability of the leads.
The cinematography of GoodFellas contributes greatly to the feeling of free-wheeling excitement that comes with mob life for many of the film’s characters, making it just as exciting for the audience as it is for the characters. This is exemplified in the infamous opening shot of the Copacabana Club, in which Hill and his wife move through the busy club and its hum of activity. Scorsese films this all in one single master shot – which is a very common technique he uses in this film – dollying and panning throughout the scene to capture various images in the same frame to create a feeling of continuity and immersion. By following Hill through the entirety of the club, seeing all manner of small dramas and scenes in between, the audience gets a feeling of dynamism and scale, making it more believable that so many things could be happening at once in this club and showing just how glamorous life at the top can be. The costuming and music help to showcase the glitz and glamour of life as a wealthy mobster in the 1960s in this scene, with Henry and Karen’s beautiful clothes, the garish décor and outfits of everyone else at the Club, and the cheery sound of The Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me” in the background.
As previously mentioned, the diegetic use of upbeat pop music from the period in which the film takes place is a central component to the film’s sense of fun and spectacle. At all turns, Scorsese uses period music to help the audience feel immersed in the time period, using songs from artists from The Cadillacs to Johnny Mathis to Bobby Darin and more. In many respects, this music is meant to serve as ironic contrast to the violent events on screen – The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” plays while Henry cuts cocaine, Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” plays as Jimmy thinks about killing Morrie and his crew, and more. With these carefully cultivated examples of music supervision, GoodFellas maintains both a fealty to the time period in which it is set and a deft command of tone. By showing the dirty life of the mob in a world filled with such sunny and energetic music, Scorsese demonstrates this life as being exhilarating for those in it, and disgusting for those outside of it.
Through the well-drawn characters performed admirably through perfect casting, and the use of cinematography and music to enhance the mood and tone of the film’s scenes, GoodFellas becomes one of the greatest movies of the 20th century. With a zippy energy that belies the horrifying acts performed by its main characters, the film manages to make the life of organized crime seem fun and sexy, only to show its unsustainability and addictive nature. By the end, just like Henry, we as the audience miss the fun period songs and dashing suits the characters used to wear, immersing them in the same kind of anxiety that Henry feels. In this way, Scorsese manages to perfectly align the audience’s expectations with those of the characters, making GoodFellas incredibly compelling.
Works Cited
Scorsese, Martin (dir.). GoodFellas. Perf. Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci. 1990.
