GOODFELLAS
With Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, Robert De Niro, Paul Sorvino, Chuck Low, Frank Sivero, and Debi Mazar.
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The film proceeds like a continuous set piece, broken in flow only by a series of strategically placed freeze-frames–13 by my count–which are clustered mainly around the opening and closing portions of the film. (The first seven carry us through the party following Henry and Karen’s wedding; the last six chart some of the murders, betrayals, and disillusionments that occur over the last 15 years in the story, beginning with the murder whose final stages are first shown in the opening scene of the film.) These freeze-frames register simultaneously as scrapbook snapshots implying memories and as sudden moments of reflection that the characters themselves never have–temporary stations of reckoning for the audience about where they’ve just been and what may still lie ahead.
I haven’t read Pileggi’s book, but critic and Scorsese specialist David Ehrenstein assures me that the film is unusually faithful to it, apart from two changes: the elision of one major robbery, the celebrated Lufthansa heist (which is briefly described but not shown, and is still a pivotal turning point in the plot), which would have added much time to an already long movie; and the elimination of U.S. Attorney Edward McDonald, who plays himself in the film, as a narrator (along with Henry and Karen). So from many points of view, Scorsese’s story-telling talent lies largely in the translation from book to film; for better and for worse, he’s at the mercy of the material he’s chosen, as he was in Raging Bull.
