If Francisco Pola is the Cao Xueqin of the American gangster theme, then Martin Scorsese is the Shi Naian of the American gangster theme. "The Godfather" is a splendid gangster epic, "Goodfellas" focuses on the lower-level street gangsters. Although the perspectives and patterns of the two are very different, this does not affect both of them being called rare good films. Together, they perfectly restored the era that was fleeting but extremely dazzling like fireworks.
On the narrative level, the two films are quite similar.
At the beginning of "The Godfather", the coffin boss said a sentence: I believe in America (I believe in the American way very much).
But when his daughter was bullied, he did not resort to American law, but came to the mafia godfather for help. This shows that the whole story of "The Godfather" is a deconstruction of the sentence "I belive in America".
More precisely, it is denying the idea of "achieving the American dream through decent work and hard work". The law that really works in the world is actually the underground rules of the Mafia. Gorgeous and glamorous like Hollywood, and scraps like market life, they are all infiltrated by the underground rules of gangsters, and the godfather can always give others "conditions that cannot be refused".
In "Goodfellas", after Henry's first court appearance as a defendant, Jimmy said something to him: You're great today, you've learned one. This is: at no time should you sell your friends.
The whole story of "Goodfellas" is also a deconstruction of this underground rule.
Jimmy and Paulie are unable to provide assistance to Henry in order to protect themselves. Henry protected himself by being a tainted witness and betraying his friends. "Don't sell friends" is the premise of becoming a "gang member". As for what to do after that, no one can give the answer. Even the premise itself was violated in the end.
So this quote is to Goodfellas what "I Believe in America" is to The Godfather.
As Martin Scorsese's masterpiece, this 1990 work embodies the director's style incisively and vividly: based on a true story, with a touch of realism, and at the same time playing with classic Hollywood narratives.
Martin and his wave, the movie boys of the 1970s (most notably Coppola, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Martin Scorsese), had a broadly similar Starting point: The era of the big factory is coming to an end, Hollywood has lost its sense of the market, the movie boys have received academic education, and then they have been confused by the "author theory" in Europe.
While drawing nourishment from the works of European film masters, they also rebelled against the classic narrative tradition established by Hollywood. Specific to Martin's work, it is the confluence of Italian neo-realism and Hollywood classic narrative, which gives birth to a unique style of "street movies".
The so-called street movies, as the name suggests, often take place in the streets, and the protagonists of the stories are mostly marginalized figures in the society. Years later, Coppola became the leader of the party, Spielberg had his own Indiana Jones series, George Lucas built his own planetary empire, and Martin was hailed as a "sociologist".
This film with the most F words in the words Guinness World Records: "Goodfellas" is exactly such a work.
At the beginning of the film, a pre-narrative technique was used, followed by the sound of the car speeding and the credit card speeding like a car. Henry, Jimmy and Tommy were driving in the suburbs in the middle of the night. They're going to dispose of a body. It's a classic Film noir scene.
Then there was a noise in the trunk of the car, and the three got out of the car by the road, and found that the person in the trunk was still dead.
Then came the different reactions of the three people: Henry was letting go. Ask how it goes. Tommy pulled out a knife very violently and stabbed the man wildly. In the film Tommy is also a cruel, ill-tempered little man. Jimmy didn't say a word, and fired several shots at the man. In the story, he has always been known as "Gentleman Jimmy".
This brief pre-narrative paragraph quickly explained the relationship between the characters and the different personalities of the three protagonists. Its conciseness is comparable to the wedding scene at the beginning of "The Godfather".
It is necessary to insert a simple term explanation. The so-called pre-narrative is to tell an important plot in a story in advance (different from flash-back), for example, at the beginning of the "Iliad" first sings the anger of Achilles, and tells how the incident was provoked, and then goes to the specific explanation. . In the field of film, this technique is sometimes called flashback.
The pre-narrative technique is common in noir films, such as Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity", which begins with an injured person on the phone, and the entire story that follows is the protagonist telling another person. crime story.
Continuing the pre-narrative paragraph at the beginning, the film leads the audience into the Italian-American community of East Brooklyn, New York, from Henry's point of view, accompanied by a voice-over narration (which is also the usual way of film noir).
Henry was originally Irish and had an Irish father who didn't live his life well. Henry wanted to be a gang member since he was a child, and he longed for the feeling of "I am one of them". A part-time job encounter brought him into this circle. The flamboyance of the gang members made Henry very envious; and the cowardice of the father who was incapable of changing his life but only blamed the child, further strengthened Henry's disgust for ordinary life.
One of the fascinating things about this film is that its handling of the plot is believable, while the fate of the characters is almost irrevocable. Henry was not destined to be a gang member from the very beginning. It was the dullness of ordinary life that made him unwilling to do so. It was the alienation of family life that made him feel more at home in the gang. It was Pauly and Dudy who showed him the real power. ... It was all of these encounters that turned him into a gangster, step by step.
The proximity to the gang also meant alienation from the family, and ultimately made Henry look at his father's beatings as a jerk.
Meanwhile, gang members shelter him, teach him life lessons, and change his place in people's minds. From Henry's perspective, while developing the underground rules, Martin did not forget to ridicule the rules on the table. This ridicule often endorses the charisma of the gangsters. For example, the thief Jimmy is good at opening up key joints everywhere, so he does not need to be rough when doing theft and robbery. Jimmy was even called "Gentleman Jimmy" for this reason.
Theft and robbery become a black and white complicity, and everyone has the same interests. Through this treatment, the crime becomes so lifelike that the wives feel that their husbands are no different from ordinary people, except that their profession happens to be fraud and theft.
Crime becomes routine, or, in other words, individual life itself becomes a part of crime. They do not communicate with the outside world, but only visit each other internally, which further strengthens a strange "sense of normality", so that if someone mentions legal punishment, it sounds incredible.
In Henry's words: Those who entered the cell were thrown into the cell on their own initiative because they couldn't stand the nagging of their wives. Or to put it further, those black people screwed things up by taking drugs in the car back and sleeping in the car. Henry thought he never screwed up, so there was no reason to go to jail.
In this way, the rules of the underground are strengthened again.
The underground rules replace the above-ground rules, the animal rules replace the human rules, and finally the companions can live a life of superiority - when they need something, they don't have to earn it, just take it.
And all of these rules are based on one basic rule: Never sell a partner.
To betray a partner means to break away from the collective, to betray the original life, and to be hunted down by the collective. This collective includes not only between partners, but also everyone's family. So each gang member also needs to pay attention to maintaining family ties—whether they believe in it or not.
Martin stared grimly at this paradox. The so-called family ethics is nothing but saying "I love you" to his wife every once in a while. And before Tommy kills the mafia man, this pragmatic set of rules brings the partners to the top. Ironically, when they fell from the top, it was the Mafia society itself that sold the "Don't sell friends" creed:
Tommy receives an invitation to join the Mafia, and Jimmy and Henry are excited about it. The truth is that the Mafia tricked Tommy into attending the ceremony in the name of joining the club, and eventually killed him.
Its symbolic meaning is: since the gang can unconditionally deceive and execute members, the creed of members "not to sell partners" has become a piece of paper.
Whether it is the laws of the earth or the rules of the underground, this is a great irony.
Martin draws his nourishment from Italian neorealist cinema, and the images look as if they were cut straight from life. There is no star halo, no staged performance lyricism, even if the voice-over and subjective perspective should have been stylized very strongly, it has become an effective means for the audience to further step into the life scene of the characters.
The frequent follow-up long shots in the film, especially the incomparably magnificent and dazzling long shot that involves hundreds of people dispatched in about 30 minutes, strengthens the voyeuristic meaning, and seems to place the cross-section of gang members' lives in the experiment. under the microscope in the chamber.
But that doesn't mean an abandonment of the classic Hollywood narrative. Those classic "conflict-resolution" patterns are hidden so deeply that it feels like the images in front of you are just part of the gang's daily life.
For example, the paragraph in which Tommy was beaten by the police (that is, "Do you think I'm funny?") seems to be improvised, but it is very dramatic, and shows Tommy's violent, inferiority and dramatic character of the most vivid.
At the same time, this also constitutes a "skirmish" in the development of the story. Tommy then clashes with the mafia. Conflict with male waiter. Witnessing the madness of the characters step by step, it also creates more and more urgent climax paragraphs. So, when the Mafia decided to deal with Tommy, it was because he had broken the rules, but it was also because the society had become increasingly intolerant of this dangerous person, and the conflict needed a thorough resolution.
After Jimmy's robbery at the airport, he was initially worried that his accomplices would reveal their wealth and expose him, but later he simply got rid of them one by one.
If you look at the whole story from Henry's point of view, you will find that Jimmy's growth path is a process of "establishing the rules - breaking the rules - establishing - breaking again". At first, he broke the rules of his father and accepted the rules of the game of gang members; the first time he was tried in court, he established the rule that "you must not betray friends". rule.
Pauli decided with him the rule of "not to sell white powder". Later, in order to make more money, Henry chose to sell it secretly, which is to break this rule. It is also accompanied by the classic plot setting method of "small conflict-resolution-bigger conflict-resolved-bigger conflict".
Finally, what I find more intriguing is that, as a core member of the gang, Jimmy has killed people, Tommy has killed people, but Henry has never killed anyone! Even "Henry didn't kill people" was used as a plot to advance the plot - when Jimmy asked Henry to get rid of someone for him, Henry responded with "Jimmy never asked me to help him kill, but this time it's not normal". Judgment basis, come to the conclusion that Jimmy is playing tricks and wants to harm him.
The film is based on a true story. Did Henry really never kill anyone?
The setting of the film "narrates from Henry's subjective point of view" makes this question even more meaningful.
View more about Goodfellas reviews
