Year taken: 2012-2013
Professor: Ernesto Castillo
Class: INGL3055
University: University of Puerto Rico, Cayey Campus
Grace H. Rodríguez Cruz
Prof. Castillo
INGL 3155
March 8th
2013
The
Analysis of the movie “Goodfellas” as cinema art
An instant classic! Martin Scorsese’s
amazing project sky-rocketed from the very moment it hit the viewing
audience. “Goodfellas” immediately
established itself in one of the top ten movies of crime, only to be surpassed
by Coppola’s “The Godfather” as the number one. If we submerge into the world
of creating a work of art, we see how Scorsese’s dedication and imagination
explodes in all the corner of the film-making world. Giving the movie the exact
dose of feeling it requires, the creativity needed to make such work a reality
is a ground-breaking experience that will change forever the cinema world. From the content to the interaction with the
people, “Goodfellas” becomes the perfect recipe for a show-business success and
a every director’s bible.
From the very beginning we get the
glimpses of dim lighting on the first scene; the mystery covers the atmosphere
of the very first time we meet our three iconic characters: Henry Hill, the
main character, Tommy DeVito, the cold-hearted hot head, and James “Jimmy”
Conway, the paranoid gent. The scene takes place in a car where these three
find themselves in it. A sound interrupts the silence; the audience, just like
Henry, might think of a flat tire of something of this magnitude. We find how
wrong we could be when the trunk is opened and a badly injured man is inside
it. Tommy and Jimmy then proceed to kill this person and a red light is focused
on Henry’s face with a sudden close-up and a stop still of him to start the
narration. The impact of this scene perfectly applies the famous sentence “the
first impression is the one that counts”. Scorsese’s Mise-en-scéne is
established in hot colored lights and the passionate impact they always have in
the audience. If a time machine could take us back to the very first time this
movie was shown to the public, the reaction to this specific scene would still
be the same one we would have today. This is definitely the impact the director
was yearning to get from us. This is the motif that will constantly show over
and over throughout the movie. The bright red light in darkness: passion,
danger and warning. From this point forward, we are expecting things to go down
to worst situations.
Parting from this, the movie goes all the
way back to the start of Henry as a teenager and how he entered to the Mafia
life. We observe and hear of his insistency in being good at his duties and to
never accuse his fellow mafia men. This takes us from the present, to the past,
all the way back to the scene of the killing of this “made man” they had in the
trunk of Henry’s car. This occurs around half an hour since the first scene was
shown in the movie. This is later followed by more new scenes and situations
narrated by Henry; which takes us to think that the patterns scene in the form
of the movie goes from A (the first scene) to B (the past and development) to A
once more (the rest of the first scene and the closure of the murder) to C (new
situations). This makes the format completely dependent to time and space.
The form and content co-exist in all the
ways possible in the filming art. The interdependence of the way the movie is
structured and the content it portrays must both be important to the finishing
product. The impact of the format compliments perfectly the story of how a
teenager goes from the most insignificant chores to a gentleman who controls
good part of the Mafia army that serves the Lucchese family. The impact of the
underworld in which Henry lives makes us see the glamorized life people get
when they are in good terms with the “big boys” and the horrible paranoia when
everything falls apart.
When the different meanings get established,
we get how the referential meaning is the plot summary: How a young man rises
with success in the Mafia and his downfall when he is struck with the problem
of drugs and paranoia, leading him to the end of his glamorized life and the
beginning of his ordinary one. The explicit meaning is found when we go a
little bit deeper into the drama and find the message the film is trying to
give us: The dirty business will not take anyone to a good end without some
high costs to pay. The implicit side is when we interpret the film and come to
a more critical thinking. In this case, we see how the Mafia life can be a
dream come true in the beginning of the alliance and how weak we can get by
obsessing with more power, money and drugs. The whole side of it can make us
lose value of the family, of those who have been loyal to us throughout time
and how little can a life be when we have the power to kill and “erase” someone
for the tiniest of mistakes. This will be the Symptomatic meaning of
“Goodfellas”, the lack of real human bonds.
The movie needs to be seen in an
evaluative way. The whole essence of the film is an exquisite mix of emotions.
It shows the development of the feelings well and it portrays the exact purpose
of the director. From the effects of cocaine (everything rushes and the music
develops faster) to the horror of fearing for your life (the mistrust of a
chore or favor asked by someone closed to you. The music stops and the
footsteps are more prominent). It is an amazing work of art and the audience
got to explore this amazing part of the project. This is one of those few films
where the audience and the critics agree unanimously about the beautifully
well-made project Scorsese gave the film art.
Sources: Goodfellas. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Perf. Robert
DeNiro, Joe Pesci, Ray Liotta. Warner Bros., 1990. Internet.
Beday, Jeremy. "GoodFellas (1990)." GoodFellas. Rotten Tomatoes,
May-June 2005. Web. 07 Mar. 2013.
Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. Film
Art: An Introduction. 9th ed. Boston [etc.: McGraw-Hill Higher Education,
2008. Print.
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