As a recognized master of film noir, Hollywood master Martin Scorsese is known for his prose-style narrative gangster films. His latest work, "The Irishman" last year, won 10 Oscar nominations, but he returned home on the Oscar night a few months ago, which made many fans sigh. "The Irishman" is known as the end of the era of gangster movies, and its "youth version" is "Good Guy" released in 1990. This work is regarded as one of the greatest crime movies in film history. Today, 30 years later, "Good Guy" meets with fans at the Changchun Film Festival with a brand-new 4K restoration look, reminiscent of people's memories of the heyday of gangster movies.
Realistic style gangster movie
When it comes to gangster movies, especially foreign gangster movies, 90% of the audience will immediately think of the "Godfather" trilogy. As one of the greatest film series in film history, the "Godfather" series takes the Corleone family as the main body, presenting us with the history of the rise and fall of a criminal gang, which is overshadowed by the beautiful photography, the exquisite story structure and the sad soundtrack. There is a strong romantic color, and it is precisely because the "Godfather" series focuses on the relationship between family members. Many people think that it is essentially a family movie based on the life of a gangster . The details of the gestures reflect the details. The relationship between the characters has always been talked about by movie fans.
As a gangster movie, "Good Guy" is obviously the other extreme-if "The Godfather" is a romantic gangster movie, then "Good Guy" is a realist gangster movie through and through. The film is based on the autobiographical novel of former criminal Henry Hill. Almost all the plots are adapted from real events. The dark tone has been laid down from the beginning to the end of the gray picture. The magnificent manor and the elegant words and deeds are in "The Good Guy." China no longer exists, replaced by the gray area of human nature and the cruelty of reality. At the same time, Scorsese used superb directing techniques to allow the audience to spend the first half of the film's protagonist Henry's life in 146 minutes. The film did not have a story line that contained strong conflicts, and did not use "problem emerges----" The traditional Hollywood narrative method of "Conflict-Problem Solving" is to intercept representative life fragments at each stage of the characters, allowing the audience to enjoy small scene performances while being violently hit by the plot from time to time. This is Martin Scorsese's "Prose Gangster Movie". This method of filming has run through his entire career as a director, and it has its shadow in all his works of the same type.
There are four main characters in the story-the protagonist Henry, his wife Karen and his two good brothers Jimmy and Tommy. All the plots revolve around these four characters, and each character has its own strong personality, and it is their personality that leads them to the final path of life.
The tear of crocodile
As the leader of Jimmy and Tommy, Jimmy will always be the coolest of the three gangsters, which also makes him one of the few old-fashioned people in the criminal gang. Among this group of low-quality hooligans, Jimmy looks so polite like a group of chickens, and often smiles to friends and outsiders, but if you judge him to be non-aggressive because of this, you would be very wrong—— On the contrary, Jimmy is the most vicious in the trio.
Jimmy can climb all the way from the bottom to the point of a small head collar, relying on more than just a well-dressed appearance. In his eyes, all partnerships and brotherhoods are linked to interests. Once the first two become obstacles in his pursuit of profit, he will immediately cut them off mercilessly. He gathered a group of people to complete the crime with him for the German Airlines robbery, but after he was done, they immediately became the possible source of leaking the news and the people who shared his wealth, so, with the rock rhythm of "Layla", he used to be In this way, his accomplices turned into corpses; even with many years of friendship, after Henry was arrested, Jimmy’s first reaction was to get rid of Henry and completely cut off the possibility of the other party’s whistleblower-without such cruelty, he How can I get to this day?
The reason why Jimmy looks quite a gentleman is because the director deliberately hides his treacherous behavior throughout the film. Only by savoring can he see through this omnipotent villain. In a sense, the role of Jimmy coincides with the theme of "Goodfellas". The title of this film is a huge irony: you think you are goodfellas to each other, but in fact everyone regards each other as a potential threat. In trouble, these brothers are the first to stabb you in the back. Because of this, the choking when Jimmy learned of Tommy’s death was understood as the tears of a crocodile—he was not at all sad because of the death of his good brother, but was just annoyed that he could not get the light of the official members of the Mafia. Interest nothing.
The biggest name in the cast, Robert De Niro (Robert De Niro) unexpectedly played a supporting role in "Goodies". Although his brilliance was slightly overshadowed by the other two in this movie, his old temperament and acting skills are still online-Martin's long lens gives a clear view of the actor's style.
Wild cowboy
The actors who acted as the three major male protagonists of the film are very distinctive, but every viewer who has watched "Good Guy" will definitely remember this violent little Italian man. He is just like Pauli said, from time to time. Crazy bison, "He's a cowboy, he always got too much to prove."
Domineering is the best description of Tommy. He was obsessed with the romance all night, changing a woman all night; the pistol was placed on his waist like a time bomb, and it would be pulled out and fired from time to time. After the robbery, Tommy shot into the sky for fun during the drag racing. The bullet pierced the paper bag. In this shot, the director perfectly combined the metaphorical relationship between the gun and sex and wrote the most prominent feature of this role. Two characteristics.
In all the scenes that show Tommy's grumpiness, there is a scene that is famous in history-the famous "Funny how". In the small chat in the bar, Tommy immediately became nervous because of Henry's "the way you talk" joke. It seems that he will meet his brother every minute. This plot is based on actor Joe Persie ( Joe Pesci's real experience when he was working in a bar when he was young fully demonstrated the duality of arrogance and low self-esteem as well as the extremely perverse character of Tommy.
No matter how wild the cowboy is, there will eventually be a trip over. Tommy is accustomed to meeting people around him at every turn. It's a pity that he got the wrong person this time. Even if he avenged his quarrel, his destiny had already set a price for what he did. As a result, in the joy of being officially introduced into the gang, everything fell into the abyss.
Joe Pessi’s performance in the film is unforgettable and almost robs other actors of the brilliance. With his outstanding acting skills, he also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor on the Oscar night the following year. Coincidentally, he was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor at this year's Oscars for "The Irishman"-look at the very different performance styles in these two films, and you will know what a real acting actor is.
The unspotted executioner
The protagonist Henry is the clearest of all, coupled with a magnetic narration, we followed him through his gang life. There is a very interesting detail. From the beginning to the end, Henry has never killed anyone. Coupled with the first-person narrative substitution, we can easily sympathize with this character-but is he really worth it?
At first glance, Henry seems to be the most innocent of all villains; but in fact, he is an all-round villain. The all-round here refers to family, friends, and society. As a son, Henry had no learning and skill since he was a child, and he joined a criminal gang at a young age to commit a crime of stealing chickens and dogs; as a husband, soon after he got married, he started staying out at night, went out fooling around every night, and even took care of it outside. Three wives and four concubines; as a member of the society, he does no evil, killing, robbery, and deceiving him everywhere; as a member of the gang, he insisted on going his own way without heeding advice, which led to his arrest. After being arrested, he did not hesitate to survive. He confessed his accomplices and sent his former benefactors and friends to jail.
Henry didn't seem to do any bad things, but in fact he did all the bad things. He used a bloodless butcher knife to personally cut his family and friends, and even his own life.
The girl who strayed into the thief ship
One of the most criticized aspects of Martin Scorsese's crime films is that the female elements in the film are too weak. In his gangster movies, women are always weak or stupid. A big reason is that in the true stories from the sources of these themes, the status of these women in the stories is often true. As Henry's wife, Karen married an ordinary Jewish girl into a small Italian mafia gang. There were reasons for misplay and collision, and she also had her own choice.
The most persuasive point is Karen's own narration after Henry helped Karen to teach his neighbors. Facing this kind of violence and unfamiliar weapons she had never seen before, Karen did not run away like ordinary girls. Instead, she felt a spontaneous excitement. It was this excitement and her obsession with vanity. , Prompting her to make the decision to marry Henry, regretting her life. After marrying, she found that her new friends were so different from the world she used to live in. She had also been confused and tried to change Henry. After the Dongchuang incident, she was also the most sober person. Helplessly, these advantages still cannot prevent her and Henry from falling together.
After the brief glitz, what is left? In the final negotiations with the police, Karen expressed the hope that he could keep in touch with his parents, but Henry was completely unmoved, thinking about his own thoughts-a husband who didn't care about him. This was Karen's final gain. If she knew that things would develop like this at the time, would she choose to set foot on this boat for temporary excitement?
Movie style
After talking about the characters, I can finally talk about the movie itself. The reason why "Good Guy" is regarded by everyone as Martin's masterpiece is not without reason: rock soundtrack, long shots, narration style, etc., all run through his next movies of the same type.
There are two long shots that have been praised countless times by posterity in "Good Guy". The first is that we walked into the tavern with Henry’s narration and met his "friends", and the other was Henry taking Karen. A long shot of going straight through the kitchen through the underground passage and taking a shortcut into the bar. The two sets of long shots have the same effect as the shooting, which is to maximize the audience’s first perspective of Henry and Karen. We can perceive the huge attraction of the flowery world in front of Henry, who is just entering the cottage. It was these dazzling neon lights that attracted Henry into the gang life impatiently.
Narration-style narration is another distinctive style of Martin gangster movies, and it can even be said to be unique: most directors only use narration in the clip or don’t use it at all. Directors like Martin who use narration throughout the entire section, It can be described as very few. And the advantages of this style are also best reflected in "Good Guys": it not only helps the audience follow the plot from time to time, but also allows the audience to follow the protagonist’s mental activities when every scene occurs, so the whole film Although it is a "flowing account" narrative, it is not dull at all, but it makes the viewer relish.
These techniques accompanied Martin through the next film career, but as far as the best and smoothest use is concerned, it is none other than this film. Therefore, many viewers jokingly call movies such as "Lady from Casino" and "The Wolf of Wall Street" the sons of "Goodies". As for "The Irishman"? I prefer to think of it as the appearance of "good guys" getting old.
Movie theme
As I said before, the title of "Goodfellas" itself is a great irony. The friends you think are actually full of intrigue and no friendship at all. Unlike "The Godfather"'s meticulous portrayal of the feelings of the characters, there is hardly any positive feelings in "Good Guy", only the most primitive animal nature and desire of human beings as animals. These are the marginal characters in the life of a group of gangsters, and they don’t even have a few. Official members of the gang can only be counted as punks at best. It's just such a group of rascals. The biggest fun every day is to spend their days playing cards in the bar late at night. Behind the suits and shoes, there are actually empty hearts.
Tommy always likes to tell jokes, and every time he tells it, his friends are overjoyed. Is it really that funny? Of course not, it's just that friends are using themselves as a punching bag for fear that he is unhappy. Martin always used a few shots at the right time to give the audience a knowing blow. When Tommy pulled out the gun in his hand and fired six rounds in a row, we seemed to be suddenly dragged back to reality. After all, this group of people is still a group. The hopeless villain. It is precisely because of the sense of substitution brought by the prose narrative that when the fate of each character turns, almost can bring a strong impact to the audience.
It took Martin an hour and a half to construct a magnificent gangster palace, and it took another hour to completely collapse it. He used a lot of pen and ink to describe the madness of the characters, how flashy the first half of the story is, and how violent the fall is in the second half. With the six bullets that Tommy shot at the camera, as always, rock music rang out, and we seemed to be immersed in the story and unable to extricate ourselves. It took Martin two and a half hours to send a powerful question to the young people who are idle and eager to join the gang: "Is this really the life you want?"
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