Film Breakdowns - Goodfellas (1990)

Film Breakdowns - Goodfellas (1990)

To become the best, we have to learn from the best.

Goodfellas is the story of a young man who ends up working for the Mafia. He becomes one of the family with the mobsters and finds the love of a girl but things take a turn for the worse when he gets addicted to drugs, a high profile gangster gets killed and they fail to lay low after a huge robbery.

Let's begin breaking down some of my favourite frames from the film which encapsulate what I think are some of the pivotal points of importance in the story.

 Let's begin!

The opening sequence sees our sort of hero if you can call him a hero lighting a rag in a bottle and using it to set a car on fire. This is not just some cool opening explosion, this represents him putting his chance of a normal life behind him, he has crossed the threshold of no return and is now baptised in the chaos of the explosion.

 What's happening here? A mound of dirt with people digging? Red lights? Mist? Without seeing the scene you could have a pretty good guess. Someone has been murdered and they're digging a grave. The lights are the car head lights and red, well red is the colour of danger, blood, passion and anger. It represents the blood on their hands.

After someone harasses the woman our sort of hero likes, he battered him with a gun and then gives it to her to hide. This looking at the gun is highly significant. She isn't looking at a gun, she is looking at the danger of her relationship with him. She is looking at a more exciting future and contemplating whether to cross the threshold.

 There is always a refusal by the central figures at one point or another to carry on with their own story. In the film she is pointing the gun at his face when he is in bed. I don't think this is what Scorsese meant in such simple terms. I think he wanted her character to point the gun at the audience to say, "I don't belong in this story, get me out, now."

Having been in on the robbery and gone against their word of not spending any, they get what they deserve. We don't like by the morals of society in this film, we live by the code of the criminals. Loyalty reigns supreme so their act is a major sin. Bloodied in their car they bought with that money and confined in an environment cage of the window.

This shot you have to watch yourself to get the full impact of how brilliant it is. The scene starts out on a wide lens with the camera close to them. As they talk, the camera dolly's back and the camera zooms in. The background creeps in, just as the pressure on both men is creeping in. The world around them is contracting and they know it.

Tommy is killed because he killed a high profile gangster who he shouldn't have killed. He has been made an example of. Just as how in a medical theatre students would watch from up high as they cut up cadavers, this shot says to me, "look at what happens when you kill the wrong guy. Look what this life has given you." 

Goodfellas is and probably will stay my all time favourite gangster film. Pulp fiction and Reservoir Dogs come in very close but this film, from it's incredible cinematography, storyline, characters and the always immense work by Martin Scorsese, this film is my tippy top of all gangster flicks. Below is the diner shot, so you can see just how amazing it looks in the film.