Needs to be seen to be believed; in one word: perfection. Every frame, every voice-over, every song - it all comes together at the exact right moment to create the perfect film experience. This film makes you really understand and feel what makes the American mafia so compelling; in the eyes of a kid, who was unfortunate enough to grow up in a tough neighborhood, those gangsters are rock stars.
Goodfellas (1990) R| 146 min| Crime, Drama. The story of Henry Hill and his life in the mob, covering his relationship with his wife Karen Hill and his mob partners. Write the first paragraph of your article here. Write the first section of your article here. Remember to include links to other pages on the wiki.
Live fast, die young - but when you die, it ain't gonna be of a glamorous suicide or drug overdose - the ending will be brutal, ugly and sad. And it may very well be one of your best friends that will blow your brains out. I'll never get tired of watching Goodfellas; the entertainment value of this film is just amazing. It doesn't happen very often that every person involved in the process of making a film is at the peak of his/her game. And rarely do art and entertainment come together the way they did here. Storytelling with impeccable pacing, this is what it's like when a master composer conducts his masterpiece.
All hail the king; the most versatile and talented filmmaker of his generation: Martin Scorsese. My vote: 10 out of 10 Favorite films: IMDb.com/list/mkjOKvqlSBs/ Lesser-Known Masterpieces: imdb.com/list/ls070242495/ Favorite Low-Budget and B-Movies: imdb.com/list/ls054808375/ Favorite TV-Shows reviewed: imdb.com/list/ls075552387/.
For other uses, see. Goodfellas Theatrical release poster Directed by Produced by Written by Screenplay: Martin Scorsese Book: Nicholas Pileggi Narrated by Starring Ray Liotta Lorraine Bracco Cinematography Editing by Distributed by Release date(s) September 19, 1990 Running time 146 minutes Country United States Language English Budget 25,000,000 Gross revenue 46,836,394 Goodfellas (also styled GoodFellas) is a 1990 American semi-fictional crime film directed. It is based on the non-fiction book by, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Scorsese. The film follows the rise and fall of three gangsters, spanning three decades. Scorsese originally intended to direct Goodfellas before, but when funds materialized to make Last Temptation, he postponed what was then known as Wise Guy.
The title of Pileggi's book had already been used for a and for 's 1986 comedy, so Pileggi and Scorsese changed the name of their film to Goodfellas. To prepare for their roles in the film, and talked often with Pileggi, who shared with the actors research material that had been left over from writing the book. According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals where Scorsese gave the actors freedom to do whatever they wanted. The director made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines that the actors came up with that he liked best, and put them into a revised script the cast worked from during principal photography. Goodfellas performed well at the box office, grossing 46.8 million domestically, well above its $25 million budget; it received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics.
The film was nominated for six but only won one for Pesci in the category. Scorsese's film won five awards from the and was named best film of the year by the, the Association, and the. Goodfellas is often considered one of the, both in the genre of crime and in general and was deemed 'culturally significant' and selected for preservation in the by the United States. The word ' is used in the film approximately 300 times,. Contents. Plot In the opening scene, the protagonist admits, 'As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster,' referring to his idolizing the gangsters in his, predominantly neighborhood in in 1955.
Wanting to be part of something significant, Henry quits school and goes to work for them. His father, knowing the true nature of the, tries to stop Henry after learning of his truancy, but the gangsters threaten the local with dire consequences should he deliver any more letters from the school to Henry's house. Henry is able to make a living for himself, and learns the two most important lessons in life: 'Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut,' which is said to him after young Henry remains silent after a court hearing.
Henry is taken under the wing of the local mob, Paul 'Paulie' Cicero and his associates, Jimmy 'The Gent' Conway , who loves hijacking trucks, and Tommy DeVito , an aggressive armed robber with a hair-trigger temper. In late 1967, they commit the, marking Henry's debut into the big time. Enjoying the perks of their criminal life, they spend most of their nights at the with countless women. Around this time, Henry meets and later marries a girl from the named Karen.
Karen at first is troubled by Henry's criminal activities, but when a neighbor assaults her for refusing his advances, Henry him in front of her. She feels aroused by the act, especially when Henry gives her the gun and tells her to hide it. On June 11, 1970, Tommy (with Jimmy's help) brutally beats Billy Batts , a mobster with the, for insulting him about being a shoeshine boy in his younger days. However, Batts was a, meaning that he could not be touched without the consent of his Gambino family bosses. Realizing that this was an offense that could get them all killed, Jimmy, Henry, and Tommy place the body in the trunk of Henry's car and bury him. But six months later Jimmy learns that the burial spot will be the site of a new property development, forcing them to the corpse and move it to another location.
Henry begins to see a mistress named Janice Rossi. When Karen finds out, she threatens to kill the both of them with a revolver pointed at his face, demanding to know if he really truly loves her. However, she cannot bring herself to kill him and an enraged Henry states he has other things to worry about such as getting killed on the street.
Paulie sends him and Jimmy to collect from an indebted in Florida, and they beat and intimidate the man until he gives them the money. Henry, Jimmy, the gambler, and most of the crew are then arrested after being turned in by the gambler's sister, a typist for the. In prison, Henry to support his family on the outside. Soon after he is released in 1978, the crew commits the infamous at.
In the meantime, Henry further establishes himself in the trade after seeing its high potential for profit, and convinces Tommy and Jimmy to join him. Things turn sour when the Lufthansa crew members buy expensive things from their share of the stolen money, and Jimmy has them killed one by one to keep everything for himself. Things are further complicated when Tommy is killed by two Gambino capos for the murder of Billy Batts, after being fooled into thinking that he is going to be made. The year is now 1980. Henry is on the cusp of making a big deal with his associates in. A nervous wreck from his cocaine usage and, he runs around trying his best to get things organized.
However, this does not stop him from being arrested by narcotics agents. When he, Karen tells him that she has flushed what amounted to $60,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet to prevent the from finding it during their raid.
As a result, Henry and his family are left virtually penniless, and Henry has to give up his plans to jump bail. Paulie feels his loyalty to Henry has been betrayed and decides to give him $3200 in exchange for having nothing to do with him ever again. Henry realizes he would be killed when Jimmy asks him to perform a hit in Florida. He then decides to enroll in the to protect himself and his family. Forced to let go of his gangster life, he now has to face living in the real world, stating, 'I'm an average nobody.
I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.' The film ends with titles explaining that Henry has been clean since 1987; Paul Cicero died in of respiratory illness in 1988 at 73 and that Jimmy, at the time of the film's release in 1990, was serving a 20-year-to-life sentence in a New York state peninteniary. Screenplay Scorsese and Pileggi collaborated on the screenplay and over the course of the 12 drafts it took to reach the ideal script, the reporter realized that 'the visual styling had to be completely redone So we decided to share credit'. They decided which sections of the book they liked and put them together like building blocks. Scorsese persuaded Pileggi that they did not need to follow a traditional narrative structure.
The director wanted to take the gangster film and deal with it episode by episode but start in the middle and move backwards and forwards. Scorsese would compact scenes and realized that if they were kept short, 'the impact after about an hour and a half would be terrific'.
He wanted to do the voiceover like the opening of and use 'all the basic tricks of the from around 1961'. Several of the names of the characters were also changed such as Tommy 'Two Gunn' DeSimone becoming Tommy DeVito; Paul Vario becoming Paulie Cicero and Jimmy 'The Gent' Burke becoming Jimmy Conway. Since the title of Pileggi's book had already been used for a and for 's 1986 comedy, Pileggi and Scorsese decided to change the name of their film to Goodfellas. Casting Once Robert De Niro agreed to play Conway, Scorsese was able to secure the money needed to make the film. The director cast Ray Liotta after De Niro saw him in 's and Scorsese was surprised by 'his explosive energy' in that film. The actor had read Pileggi's book when it came out and was fascinated by it.
A couple of years afterwards, his agent told him that Scorsese was going to direct a film version. In 1988, Liotta met the director over a period of a couple of months and auditioned for the film. The actor campaigned aggressively for a role in the film but the studio wanted a well-known actor.
'I think they would've rather had than me', the actor remembers. To prepare for the role, De Niro consulted with Pileggi who had research material that had been discarded while writing the book. De Niro often called Hill several times a day to ask how Burke walked, held his cigarette, and so on. Driving to and from the set, Liotta listened to FBI audio cassette tapes of Hill, so he could practice speaking like his real-life counterpart. To research her role, Lorraine Bracco tried to get close to a mob wife but was unable to because they exist in a very tight-knit community. She decided not to meet the real Karen because she 'thought it would be better if the creation came from me. I used her life with her parents as an emotional guideline for the role'.
Paul Sorvino had no problem finding the voice and walk of his character but found it challenging finding 'that kernel of coldness and absolute hardness that is antithetical to my nature except when my family is threatened'. Principal photography Two weeks in advance of the filming, the real was paid $480,000. The film was shot on location between,;; and also parts of during the spring and summer of 1989 with a budget of $25 million. Scorsese broke the film down into sequences and everything because of the complicated style throughout. According to the filmmaker, he 'wanted lots of movement and I wanted it to be throughout the whole picture, and I wanted the style to kind of break down by the end, so that by his Henry's last day as a wiseguy, it's as if the whole picture would be out of control, give the impression he's just going to spin off the edge and fly out.' He claims that the film's style comes from the first two or three minutes of: extensive narration, quick edits, and multiple locale switches.
It was this reckless attitude towards convention that mirrored the attitude of many of the gangsters in the film. Scorsese remarked, 'So if you do the movie, you say, 'I don't care if there's too much narration. Too many quick cuts? — That's too bad.' It's that kind of really punk attitude we're trying to show'.
He adopted a frenetic style in order to almost overwhelm the audience with images and information. He also put a lot of detail in every frame because the gangster life is so rich. The use of freeze frames was done because Scorsese wanted images that would stop 'because a point was being reached' in Henry's life. Joe Pesci did not judge his character but found the scene where he kills Spider for talking back to his character hard to do because he had trouble justifying the action until he forced himself to feel the way Tommy did. Lorraine Bracco found the shoot to be an emotionally difficult one because it was such a male-dominated cast and realized that if she did not make her 'work important, it would probably end up on the cutting room floor'. When it came to the relationship between Henry and Karen, Bracco saw no difference between an abused wife and her character. According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals where Scorsese let the actors do whatever they wanted.
He made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines that the actors came up with that he liked best, and put them into a revised script that the cast worked from during principal photography. For example, the scene where Tommy tells a story and Henry is responding to him — the 'what's so funny about me' scene — is based on actual event that happened to Pesci. It was worked on in rehearsals where he and Liotta improvised and Scorsese recorded 4-5 takes, rewrote their dialogue and inserted it into the script. The cast did not meet Henry Hill during the film's shoot but a few weeks before it premiered, Liotta met him in an undisclosed city. Hill had seen the film and told Liotta that he loved it.
The long tracking shot through the Copacabana nightclub came about because of a practical problem: the filmmakers could not get permission to go in the short way and this forced them to go round the back. Scorsese decided to do it in one shot in order to symbolize Henry's whole life is ahead of him and according to the director. 'It's his seduction of her Karen and it's also the lifestyle seducing him'. This sequence was shot eight times. Henry's infamous day in preparing a drug deal was the hardest part of the film for Scorsese to shoot because he wanted to properly show Henry's state of anxiety, paranoia and racing thoughts caused by and intoxication, which is difficult for an actor (who had never been under their influence) to accurately portray. The director ended the film with Henry regretting that he is no longer a wiseguy and Scorsese said, 'I think the audience should get angry at him and I would hope they do — and maybe with the system which allows this'. Post-production Scorsese wanted to depict the film's violence realistically, 'cold, unfeeling and horrible.
Almost incidental.' However, he had to remove ten frames of blood in order to ensure an from the. With a budget of $25 million, Goodfellas was Scorsese's most expensive film to date but still only a medium budget by Hollywood standards.
It was also the first time he was obliged by Warner Bros. To preview the film. It was shown twice in California and a lot of audiences were 'agitated' by Henry's last day as a wise guy sequence and Scorsese argued that that was the point of the scene. Scorsese and the film's editor, made this sequence faster with more jump cuts to convey Henry's drug-addled point of view. In the first test screening there were 40 walkouts in the first ten minutes. One of the favorite scenes for test audiences was the one where Tommy tells the story and Henry is responding to him - the 'what's so funny about me' scene.
Main article: Scorsese chose the songs for the soundtrack using only those that commented on the scene or the characters 'in an oblique way'. The only rule he adhered to with the soundtrack was to only use music that could have been heard at that time. For example, if a scene took place in 1973, he could use any song that was current or older.
According to Scorsese, a lot of non-dialogue scenes were shot to playback. For example, he had 'Layla' playing on the set while shooting the scene where the dead bodies are discovered in the car and the meat-truck. Sometimes, the lyrics of songs were put between lines of dialogue to comment on the action. Some of the music Scorsese had written into the script while other songs he discovered during the editing phase. Network TV version The dubbing of the dialogue of the network TV version was personally directed by Scorsese.
It added a personal introduction to the film from Scorsese himself. It contains frequent usage of variants of the word 'freak', such as 'I've got this freakin' gun pointed at your freakin' head.' However, much other profanity in the film was retained, as was the violence. Release and reception.
Reviews The film received very positive reviews from critics and currently has a 96% rating at and a 89 metascore at. In his review for, wrote, 'More than any earlier Scorsese film, Goodfellas is memorable for the ensemble nature of the performances The movie has been beautifully cast from the leading roles to the bits.
There is flash also in some of Mr. Scorsese's directorial choices, including freeze frames, fast-cutting and the occasional long tracking shot. None of it is superfluous'. Gave the film four out of four stars and called it, 'great cinema — and also a whopping good time'., in his review for magazine, wrote 'Every crisp minute of this long, teeming movie vibrates with outlaw energy'.
In his review for, Richard Corliss wrote, 'So it is Scorsese's triumph that GoodFellas offers the fastest, sharpest 2 1/2-hr. Ride in recent film history'.
![Goodfellas Goodfellas](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/Departed234.jpg)
However, in the wrote, 'There is a short, needling comedy of violence and cowardice somewhere inside this stylish film, and it is worth watching more than once to prise it free. Scorsese himself chickened out, I think; perhaps the Mob got to him after all'. William Fugazy, of the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, a watchdog group on ethnic injustice, which claims a membership of 10 million and consists of 76 of the largest heritage groups in the United States, called for a boycott of the film and wanted to ban it. 'It's the worst stereotyping, the worst portrayal of the Italian community I've ever seen. Far worse than.
One killing after another', he said. Scorsese responded to this criticism by saying, 'As Nick Pileggi always points out, there are 18 to 20 million Italian-Americans. Out of that, there are only 4,000 alleged organised crime members.
But, as Nick says, they cast a very long shadow'. Awards Goodfellas was nominated for six including Joe Pesci for, Lorraine Bracco for, (however famously lost to ), Scorsese for, for, and Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi for. When won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (the only Academy Award the film won), his entire speech was 'It was my privilege, thank you'.
It is one of the shortest Oscar-acceptance speech, after 's, who simply said, 'Thank you', upon winning for, and 's ('Thank you' and other unintelligible words) when he received an Honorary Oscar. Later, Pesci admitted that he did not say more, because 'I really didn't think I was going to win'. Goodfellas was nominated for five including,. It failed to win any of these awards.
Scorsese's film won five awards from the including,. The voted Goodfellas the of 1990, Robert De Niro was named for his performance in the film and in, and Scorsese was voted Best Director. The Association also voted Scorsese as, GoodFellas as, awards for Pesci and Bracco as and, respectively, and Best Cinematography to for his work on the film.
The voted Pesci as. The voted Goodfellas of 1990 and Scorsese as. American Film magazine declared Goodfellas the best film of 1990 according to a poll of 80 movie critics.
Legacy GoodFellas is #94 on the 's list of and #92 on its from 2007. In June 2008, the AFI revealed its 'Ten top Ten'—the best ten films in ten 'classic' American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Goodfellas was acknowledged as the second best in the gangster film genre (after ). In 2000, the United States deemed the film 'culturally significant' and selected it for preservation in the. It is also rated #14 on `s Top 250 list., a friend and supporter of Scorsese, named Goodfellas the 'best mob movie ever' and placed it among the best films of the nineties. Magazine listed Joe Pesci's Tommy DeVito as #96 on its list of The 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time, calling him 'perhaps the single most irredeemable character ever put on film'.
Placed Goodfellas at #10 in their 2002 poll The 100 Greatest Films. In 2005, named Goodfellas as the. In December 2002, a UK film critics poll in ranked the film #4 on their list of the 10 Best Films of the Last 25 Years. Magazine ranked Tommy DeVito #59 in their 'The 100 Greatest Movie Characters' poll.
Time included Goodfellas in their list of 100 all-time best films. Recognition. #94. #92. #2 Gangster References. ^ Thompson, David; Ian Christie (1996). 'Scorsese on Scorsese'.
^ Malcolm, Derek (September/October 1990). ^ Goodwin, Richard. 'The Making of Goodfellas'. ^ Linfield, Susan (September 16, 1990).
' Goodfellas Looks at the Banality of Mob Life'. ^ Clark, Mike (September 19, 1990). ' GoodFellas step from his childhood'. ^ Kelly, Mary Pat (March 2003).
'Martin Scorsese: A Journey'. Thunder Mouth Press. ^ Gilbert, Matthew (September 16, 1990).
'Scorsese Tackles the Mob'. ^ Hughes, Howard Crime Wave: The Filmgoers' guide to the great crime movies pp.
Portman, Jamie (October 1, 1990). ' Goodfellas Star Prefers Quiet Life'.
^ Arnold, Gary (September 25, 1990). 'Real Fellas Talk about Mob Film'.
Wolf, Buck (November 8, 2005). Retrieved 2007-06-24. ^ Papamichael, Stella (October 22, 2004).
Retrieved 2007-06-24. Witchel, Alex (September 27, 1990). 'A Mafia Wife Makes Lorraine Bracco a Princess'. Van Gelder, Lawrence (October 12, 1990). 'At the Movies'.
^ Kaplan, Jonah (writer and editor); Stephen Altobellow and Jeffrey Schwartz (producers). (2004) (Blu-ray Disc). Getting Made: The Making of Goodfellas. Malcolm, Derek (September 17, 1990). 'The Venice Film Festival ends in uproar'. Box Office Mojo.
Retrieved 2008-03-20. Canby, Vincent (September 19, 1990).
'A Cold-Eyed Look at the Mob's Inner Workings'. Ansen, David (September 17, 1990). 'A Hollywood Crime Wave'. Corliss, Richard (September 24, 1990). Retrieved 2009-01-29. Lane, Anthony (October 28, 1990).
'The Mob gets to Scorsese'. Italians outraged by new Scorsese movie'. September 17, 1990. 'And the Oscar Nominees Are.' February 14, 1991.
Rohter, Larry (March 26, 1991). 'Kevin Costner and Dances With Wolves Win Top Oscar Prizes'. ^ Dhesi, Japinder (September 20, 2004). Retrieved 2008-03-20. ' Godfather lands 7 Globe nominations'. December 28, 1990.
' GoodFellas, Cinema Paradiso dominate the British Oscars'. March 18, 1991. ^ Spillman, Susan (December 19, 1990). 'Critics join mob honoring GoodFellas'. Landis, David (December 17, 1990).
'Ganging up to praise GoodFellas'. Spillman, Susan (December 14, 1990). ' Wolves dances away with award'. Fox, David J. (January 8, 1991). 'Critics say they're jolly GoodFellas'. Arnold, Gary (February 19, 1991).
' GoodFellas targeted for even more acclaim'. Retrieved 2008-06-18. Retrieved on 2008-03-26. Retrieved 2008-03-26. December 2002. Retrieved 2008-08-27. Retrieved 2008-12-02.
Schickel, Richard (2005). Retrieved 2009-01-29.
Bibliography. Martin Scorsese: A Journey, by Mary Pat Kelly (2003, Thunder Mouth Press), ISBN 9706. Scorsese on Scorsese, by David Thompson and Ian Christie (2004, ), ISBN 9021. Goodfellas, by Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese (1990, Faber and Faber), ISBN 9659.
Wiseguy, by Nicholas Pileggi (1990, Rei Mti), ISBN 9224. External links. at the. at the. at. at.
at. at. Fact vs. Fiction.
One dog goes one way and the other goes the other. Awards and achievements Preceded by 1991 Succeeded by Films by 1960s.