Film Studies Essays Goodfellas

Film Studies Essays GoodfellasCritical analysis of Ameri screwing crime fool a personal valetner Goodfellas. Focusing on the attitudes towards criminality and law suggested in this film.Ameri weed cinema seems to have always had a preoccupation with crime and criminals, which is a testament not just to the proliferation of the crime literary genre, exclusively to the quality of its luminaries. Of word form it patrons that James Cagney and the mobster flicks of the thirties and forties were drawing in crowds at the same time as one of Americas swellest crime writers, Raymond Chandler, was creating private eye masterpieces such as The greathearted Sleep, and adapting other works such as Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) for the screen. One of the largest audience drawing genre types of the forties behind melodrama and musical, its not hard to see how Bogart Bacall, Chandler, Wilder, Cagney, Spillane and Aldrich could go on to persuade two mainstream an alternative cinem a for over half a century.Of course this is not to diminish the overseas influence on the crime genre (and of course its many sub-genres), and in particular of Godard and Truffaut and Melvilles French recent wave, the nouvelle vague, and its flagship text A B give away De Souffle (Godard, 1960), whose acknowledgement of cinematic technique tied up in the truly act of telling a cinematic tall tale can be seen as a direct precursor to Tarantinos post-modern technique of actively referencing other films in his deliver work (see the luminescence briefcase in Pulp Fiction 1994 which references the uranium filled briefcase in Kiss Me, Deadly Aldrich, 1955).So we can see that cinema has had an active preoccupation with criminality for the best part of s even upty years. Whilst film noir and the gangster films of the thirties tend to focus on the structure of good versus bad and the devolution of the good, Tarantinos former works fuse together conventional cinematic notions of crime a nd criminality with the comic-realistic spanner-in-the-works of occupational mishaps (e.g. killing of a victim and the ensuing difficulty in covering up the mess, or a consideration of how gigantic it actually takes an abdominal gun-shot wound to kill a man). In this essay I shall be considering how Martin Scorseses Goodfellas (1990) presents ideas of crime and its relation to violence.One of the few Scorsese films post- enraged Bull (1980) to receive much critical acclaim (a pertinacious with closely recent erupting The Aviator, 2004), Goodfellas maintains the ambivalent attitude toward violence that we can also see in Raging Bull and Taxi Driver (1976), although it is a far less visually roughshod film. Instead the barbarousness comes through the constant underlying pressure of impending violence, which exists throughout like a drum bob pounding out the rhythm in every scene. Similar also to these two other films, and to baseborn Streets, in that location is a latent host ility that exists is his work between the repellent nature of his characters violent outbursts, and our sympathy with, for instance, Travis retirement and isolation, Jakes feelings of betrayal and the cultural limitations laid upon his masculinity, or Henrys drive for success and his sexual relation restraint compared to his associates. Steve Neale and Murray Smith state thatThis ambivalent attitude to its protagonist is what makes Taxi Driver a great film. It is a film fuelled by the tension of sympathising with Travis loneliness while being repelled by his violent, anti-social behaviour. This is echoed in the tension between the reality of the street scenes and the lavish and seductive cinematography (by Michael Chapman) and music (by Bernard Herrmann).There is a equivalent relationship between the visual and aural aesthetics in Goodfellas and the constant simmering presence of violence. out-of-the-way(prenominal) more than these previous dealings with violence, crime and mascu linity, Goodfellas is a visually pleasing film, all bright work and smooth camera work, and even the scenes of violence are not nearly as vividly powerful as Travis shoot-out in the finale to Taxi Driver. Whereas in Mean Streets the aural gleefulness of the soul soundtrack was enured and contrasted by the verite starkness and of its imagery (the proliferation of hand-held camera work, the red-light tainted nightclub scene, the natural light in Harvey Keitels apartment), in Goodfellas the up-tempo soundtrack is accompanied by a camera which prowls smoothly on cranes and dollies, and lighting which brings out the colours of his characters expensive and brash clothing and houses. More than his earlier works, the aesthetic of Goodfellas is typically cinematic thither is none of the gritty, subversive, nouveau vague inspired imagery.The relevance of this is in Scorseses sympathetic response to Henrys preoccupation with the trappings of power and prestige that his violent ways have af forded him. Even at the terminate of the film, when Henry is released into the safe anonymity of the witness protection programme, and surrounded by suburban comfort, he cant help but miss the privileges and excitement of the life. When Henry asks Karen to hide his gun for him, having witnessed him savagely beat a young man who came on too strong, she was not repelled by his violent masculinity, but admits that it turned me on. In a film of such explosive violence and derogatory machismo, perhaps the most shocking violent outburst comes in the first act when the young Henry is stricken by his father for skipping school. What is most shocking is the casual manner in which Henry as narrator recalls this domestic abuse he recalls he had to take a few beatings, but in the long run he stills feels it was well worth it. Henry, like Karen, is intoxicated by the power, money and lavish strong gains that the life can afford him and his family. The constant presence of violence made er ratic by ego, and the gather up to carry out vile deeds such as burying a foul flavour corpse, or to go through violent domestic abuse, are merely the downsides of the job like bottom pain to a construction worker, or knee damage to a sportsman, and it is this tension, this acceptance of violence as an everyday occurrence, which Scorsese explores. Like Henry, who is more sensitive than Tommy and Jimmy, the audience experience the pleasurable excesses and comforts alongside the brutal and repellent nature of the work, and neither is solely celebrated or derided in isolation. Neale and Smith stateScorsese does not loss to completely distance himself from Travis in order to make an explicitly polemical film against vigilantism and everything else unpleasant most the character. This is the type of film perhaps Robert Altman or Stanley Kubrick would have made. But Scorsese rarely wants this kind of distance from his characters, and his films quit a dynamism few others achieve beca use of this.The film is famous for the manner in which its violence explodes out of seemingly innocuous bunks, and we can see this reflected in the way Tommy lashes out at the poor young waiter who cant keep a tight enough hold on his mouth, stab him in the foot and then later killing him. In this instance, it is the unavoidable flaws in the characteristics of these men that heighten into bloody violence, and this is a theme which is continued throughout more often that not, it is the characters inability to avoid their own greed or their own machismo which leads to their downfall. The young waiter thinks Tommy is too big for his boots, and cant help but keep adding a little smart line under his breath, even though he knows he is pushing it with a dangerous man. In the same way as Tommy, he refuses to let someone steal whatever level of dominance and respect he may have, however little, even if it increases the threat of injury, or even death. similarly Tommys downfall comes in his inability to get wanton in his station, to tone down his tough-little-guy, bull-in-a-china-shop persona, until he finally realises his mistake with a quiet Oh no as he heads off not to become a made-man, but to be shot in the head. It is this goal ambition, this tendency to always want more more power, more money, more cocaine, more respect which instigates the violence.So then we can see not just in Goodfellas but throughout Scorseses work, there exists tempered a consideration of the repellent nature of violent crime tangled up in a close study of character, and the forces that drive these criminals to their acts of criminality. For all its set pieces and murders, the most memorable aspect of Goodfellas is the way in which the flaws in these characters personalities and the overtly masculine posturing nature of their world always instigate and escalate the violence, and ultimately bring about their own downfall Tommys slaying of a made man is brought on by the mans big m outh and his desire to have the last word, as well as Tommys indignation at someone trying to confirm his seniority over him. Like many of the scenes in the film, it starts off banal and escalates through both characters inability to calm the situation until one of them is dead. At the heart of this is Tommys dissatisfaction with his status he has some respect, but he wants more. Likewise Jimmy has some power and a big share of their Lufthansa cash, but he wants more. Henry and Karen want more cocaine, more time, a more casual lifestyle. Scorsese seems to be suggesting that crime does pay, just not enough.BIBLIOGRAPHY prat Belton, American Cinema/American Culture, McGraw/Hill, 1994John Belton, Movies and Mass Culture, Athlone Press, 1996Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, Screening The Male, Routledge, 1993Steve Neale and Murray Smith, Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, Routledge, 1998Robert Warshow, The gangster as tragic hero in The Immediate Experience, Harvard Press, 1962Robin Wood, Hol lywood from Vietnam to Reagan, Columbia, 1986Justin Wyatt, High Concept, University of Texas, 1994