Why I Can Say Fearlessly that GoodFellas is the Best Scorsese Film Ever?

After 26 movies, 18 documentaries, and 8 short films, Martin Scorsese’s best work is hands down in my opinion GoodFellas

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ILLUMINATION

6 min readDec 11, 2021

In Little Italy, one simple boy is doing some casual works for a Gangster, so the kid skips the classes so often, that his teachers are asking, “where is Henry?” A postman is bringing a school letter to Henry’s parents, not so fast sir, gangster catches the postman, the image is frozen, a voice-over is telling us that, from this moment, never again did any letter from school come to his house. To me, this scene was a kind of epiphany. The first time I studied film history, the professor told me that a good director never uses voice-over. It is always better to show something than to reveal it by speaking. The art of cinema is based on images, not on words. Well, even though Martin Scorsese uses a lot of voice-over in some of his masterpieces, everyone considers them to be fabulous films. Sorry professor.

Before talking about the film, I would like to draw attention to some of Scorsese’s aesthetic principles.

Voice-over narration.
Sequence shot.
Music -apparently- disassociated from the action taking place.
The editting by Thelma Schoonmaker.
Street Violence.

Voice-over narration.

As I said, the rules of canonical cinema don’t like the use of voice-over. Well, I agreed before I saw this:

Goodfellas — 1990. Cut from youtube.

Could it be a better narrative resource? By freezing the image of the poor letter carrier, the voiceover makes us understand that these guys are not ordinary. A voiceover is a powerful tool, it’s very easy to overuse it, but if you do it right, at the right time, dude! I’m in!

Martin Scorsese can use the voice-over not only when the story starts but until the very end, just like he did on Casino — 1995. Ten minutes of various voiceovers to tell the spectators that the film is arriving at the end. I left a part of it here:

Casino -1995, cut from Youtube.

Sequence shot.

What can I say about the sequence shot? It’s a challenge on the acting and the technical level. A huge choreography where every simple element has to be harmonized to get a satisfactory take. Scorsese is one of the world championship-sequence-shot-makers.

But Scorsese doesn’t use long takes just for fun. He doesn’t want or have to prove anything. When he chooses the sequence shot it’s because it’s the best way to explain/show/tell a particular part of the film. We can experiment with the character’s mental journey. As in The King of Comedy — 1982, we realize the entire dimension of the problem when he is carried out of the buildings through the tv studio. But the best sequence shot in his career could be this one on Gangs of New York. In just 1 minute and 40 seconds we can realize the whole process from the time a soldier enlists in the army until he comes back dead in his coffin:

Gangs of New York — 2002, cut from Youtube.

“Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out.” — Martin Scorsese.

Music -apparently- disassociated from the action taking place.

Rock and Roll over is slow-motion while it’s introduced an important character, happy pop when the FBI discovers bad guys headquarters… Music takes us beyond what we are seeing. It not only emphasizes the action. It makes us aware of a multitude of layers at the same time.

Popular music formed the soundtrack of my life. Martin Scorsese.

The editting by Thelma Schoonmaker.

After a 6-week editing workshop where she met Scorsese, he started working on his first film, which was also Martin Scorsese’s film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door — 1967. 50 years later, 3 Oscars, 6 nominations, she has made the great last -until today- movie: The Irishman — 2019.

She is a specialist in provoking opposite sensations using abrupt changes of rhythm.

Video from Youtube.

Street Violence.

I bet the little Martin saw many different kinds of street violence in his neighborhood. From Mean Streets — 1973 to The Irishman — 1919, Scorsese delights in showing us street violence from various points of view. In my opinion, a fundamental aspect of these kinds of fights is mischief. The people involved are not Bruce-Lee. They don’t know about martial arts. They know about the streets-law. About codes, weapons, hurting relatives, families. We find these “combats” as credible ones.

“Goodfellas” — 1990, my favorite Scorsese film.

The Scorsese masterpiece. No doubt in my mind. Every single one of Scorsese’s attributes are present in this movie. Voiceover, street violence, catholic guilt, the life journey of an antihero, a frozen image, De Niro, dissociated music, sequence shots, and overall an electric rhythm that catch you and don’t let you free until the end (after 148 minutes!).

Goodfellas is based on Wiseguy, by Nick Pileggi. Nick and Scorsese wrote the Script, in fact, this is one of the few movies where Scorsese appears on the credits as a Script author. There were 11 versions! The title of Goodfellas was motive by two reasons: 1- in the 80’s already existed a tv series with that name, 2- Bryan de Palma had rolled a homonymous film with Danny DeVito Wise Guy — 1986.

Despite that De Niro is in the film, the main character is absolutely Ray Liotta,(who had already worked with Martin on New York, New York — 1977) as the vocational mafioso Henry Hill, and the best secondary ever (who won the Oscar) is the little great Joe Pesci. Even the mother of Scorsese is in the film. Please try not to laugh at this scene in which the boys go to the house of the mother of one of them to get a knife (to cut on pieces a body they have in the car).

Goodfellas made the path other gangster’s movies had to follow. The Sopranos — 1999/2007 is -not surprisingly- the very best example of that. Many characters from Goodfellas are present in this popular tv series, according to Wikipedia:

The Sopranos has 27 actors in common with the 1990 Martin Scorsese gangster film Goodfellas, including the main cast members Lorraine Bracco, Michael Imperioli, and Tony Sirico.

Do you find anything similar between both covers?

Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) does exist. This fact gives the film extra credibility. Pileggi (the author of the book) met Henry Hill when he was in jail. The part where the gangster rapt the postman really happened! This way of telling real events has been used by Scorsese several times (The Aviator, Raging Bull, Wolf of Wall Street, etc, etc). However, this real base cannot be understood as a biopic, a documentary, or others. In professor Steve Rimbeau’s words:

the elements he extracts from reality are reduced to their most everyday dimension.

Every simple person in the movie is a mythological being. As like so, we cannot stop admiring them. But these mythoi are (like the old greeks) put down on the ground. We see their lives under an aesthetical emotion unparalleled before.

According to Scorsese (0n “Osmose” article from the french magazine Positif, number 356–1990):

The way he lives is fascinating, especially in his idea of the American dream. Crime is a form of exuberance, a distortion of the American dream in which everything is possible (…) for me, Henry Hill is a fascinating character because he is destined to be destroyed.