Style as Attitude: Two Films by Martin Scorsese (GoodFellas, Casino)
1996; Issue: 41 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2562-2528
Autores Tópico(s)Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
ResumoIt is inconceivable that any critic who has seen a number of Martin Scorsese's films would reject the claim that the director is a stylist and that his work displays thematic consistency. But the claim, the basis of auteurist criticism, can have its drawbacks and particularly so when it leads to the kind of critical thinking that has greeted his two most recent films, The Age of Innocence (1993) and Casino (1995). The former was given a predominantly polite but cool reception because it wasn't the kind of project, a period piece and a melodrama, associated with Scorsese the director of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and GoodFellas; with the last, Scorsese was taken to task for supposedly retooling one of his former successes. (1) On the one hand, GoodFellas and Casino do have a lot in common: a) in addition to dealing with organized crime and having narratives which span decades, both films were adapted from fact-based books by Nicholas Pileggi, who, with Scorsese, co-authored the screenplays; b) the stylistic devices found in the two films include voiceover narration, freeze frames, flashbacks, rapid dolly moves; c) the films employ Scorsese's longstanding editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and feature two of his regular actors, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci. It is particularly Scorsese's use of Pesci which seems to have annoyed critics as the actor plays a similar role in both films and it was his GoodFellas performance that won Pesci an Academy Award. But while there are strong connections between Pesci's roles and his performances in GoodFellas and Casino, the two films provide the actor with distinctive characterizations. For instance, it is difficult to even imagine the Pesci character of GoodFellas being a caring father, which is what his character, although not without irony, is in Casino; also, Pesci's emotional relationship with the De Niro character in Casino is more complex than are any of his male or female relationships in GoodFellas. In any case, the fact that Pesci's roles share character traits and narrative functions doesn't necessarily make Casino a redundant film. Perhaps the critics who have expressed a dissatisfaction with Casino on the basis of Pesci's presence were looking for a convenient way to dispense with what is a rigorous, sombre and demanding film. Before dealing with Casino, I want to briefly discuss GoodFellas's stylistics. GoodFellas is centred on Henry Hill/Ray Liotta, an Irish-Sicilian living in Brooklyn, who, as a teenager in the mid-50s, begins working in a menial capacity for the mob. The film covers approximately thirty years of Henry's life; in the early 1980s, Henry, realizing that he is going to be killed because of who and what he knows, accepts an offer to testify against his long time Mafia friends, Jimmy Conway/Robert De Niro and Paul Cicero/Paul Sorvino. Scorsese's treatment of the material, which can be summarized as the story of a young man's aspirations to make good and be somebody, is wonderfully encapsulated in the film's audacious opening credit sequence. The sequence begins with introductory credits by Elaine and Saul Bass; these initial credits, which move very rapidly across the screen from right to left each being held briefly screen centre on their second appearance, are accompanied by a noise which sounds like a car on an open road speeding by. After an intertitle reading `This is based on a true story', there is a cut to a night time shot with the camera positioned behind a moving car; there is a second intertitle, `New York 1970', and then a cut to the inside of the car. Henry, who is driving, begins to wonder what is making the clearly heard thumping sound which Jimmy and Tommy de Vito/Joe Pesci seem to be unaware of. There is a cut to the parked car and then a cut to the camera tracking in on the car's trunk and the origin of the thumping sound. In a rapid series of shots, a badly beat but alive man is seen in the trunk; Tommy lunges towards the man with a huge butcher knife and repeatedly stabs the man after which Jimmy shoots at the body. …
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