I re-watched Goodfellas Martin Scorsese (1990) recently for a couple of reasons, Henry Hill the real life gangster who the film is based on died in June and I’ve had it sat on a shelf on Blu-ray for months without watching it, the DVD version drove me mad as you had to turn the disc over half way through the film, well that was my excuse for buying it on Blu-ray anyway.
I have all so found some video clips from YouTube showing some of the scenes I will talk about and I will post them after I have finished writing this piece as I realise not everyone who reads this may have seen the film before.
The film audaciously starts with a scene that’s really from the middle of the film Henry (Ray Liotta) Jimmy (Robert De Niro) and Tommie (Joe Pesci) are driving in a car, banging can be heard from the boot they pull over, as they stand behind the car all three of them are bathed in red light from the tail lights it says so much about the three of them before much has really happened in the film yet they are already doomed to their fate due to their actions as becomes more apparent as the film goes on.
I can’t really talk about Goodfellas without mentioning the three minute steadi-cam shot which is just sheer brilliance and has been spoken about many times before, it pulls it right in to Henry’s world just as it does Karen (Lorraine Bracco) his life seems so exciting and glamorous to her as well as to us as we are quite literally sucked into his world, being led in through the back entrance and through the bowels of the club leaving the long queue at the door behind. This emphasises the different world we are being allowed to enter and the importance and self-worth it gives to Henry that he is letting us into it. Equally as impressive to me is the sequence where Henry is high on coke delivering the guns to Jimmy and picking up the coke all the time his paranoia is in high gear as he thinks a helicopter is following him around. The pace that the editing and quick camera moves gives this scene is fantastic giving us a real sense of Henry’s paranoia, drug use, and how totally out of control he is by this point.
Another of my favourite moments is right at the end of the film with an homage to the silent era of film as Tommie shoots his gun straight into the camera mimicking the most famous shot from the great train robbery Edwin s Porter (1903).
Even though I have only spoken about technical elements of the film the cast are outstanding throughout the film, especially Joe Pesci as Tommie you are never quite sure what he will do next, there is always an unsettling air of menace any time he is on screen.
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