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Apotheosis of the Mobster
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18097 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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11 / 1990 |
1,079 Words |
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Cynthia Grenier
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The fall of 1990 is going to go down in future books of film history as the return - not to say apotheoses - of the gangster movies. In quick order, Goodfellas with Robert De Niro, about New York mobsters, won Martin Scorsese the Silver Lion for best direction at the Venice Film Festival in September. Phil Joanou's State of Grace with Sean Penn, Ed Harris, and Gary Oldman about the Westies, an Irish gang in New York City at war with the Italian mob, had the critics instantly talking about Academy nominations. The Coen brothers' Miller's Crossing with Albert Finney and Gabriel Bryne as gangsters of the twenties opened the New York Film Festival to enthusiastic reviews. And around the country, movies theaters were playing the coming attractions for Francis Coppala's Godfather III as audiences cheered in anticipation of its holiday season release.
The big films this year up to now how been - much to the surprise of the industry and the critics - women's films, notoriously poor draws at the box office. Pretty Woman and Ghost, two unorthodox but ultimately sentimental love stories, left the megamllion-budget violent macho summer movies in the dust. So why has everyone gotten so excited about these new high testosterone productions? Perhaps, for starters, Robert De Niro, Gary Oldman, Albert Finney, and Al Pacino deliver the moviegoer a lot more for his money in terms of acting than the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, or Warren Beatty. The acting in these films is truly of a dazzlingly high level. The directors, too, if working in the narrow vein of a genre film, nonetheless still have much wider opportunities to do something creatively interesting than in the blockbuster movie where special effects on how to blow away a human being count for more than directorial talent.
Blood and Pasta
Most importantly, however, the writing of these blood and pasta dramas is considerably superior to the conventions of the summer's big-budget movies, designed mainly of course for largely youthful audiences. These are films for a somewhat more mature audience. GoodFellas is an excellent case in point. The screenplay is signed by Nicholas Pileggi and director Scorsese, with large portions of the dialogue coming intact from Pileggi's recent nonfiction bestseller, Wiseguy. Pileggi has one of the best ears around today for capturing the vernacular of the small-time hood.
When Henry Hill was eleven years old in the Brownsville-East new York section of Brooklyn in the early sixties, living across the street from a cabstand run by a ranking member of the Lucchese crime family, he used to watch them from his window and dream of being like them. "My ambition was to be a gangster. To be a wiseguy. To me being a wiseguy better than being president of the United States. It meant power among people who had no power. It meant perks in a working class neighborhood that had no privileges…. I dreamed about being a wiseguy the way other kids dreamed about being doctors or movie stars or firemen or ballplayers.”
As errand boy and valet parker to Paulie Vario (Paul Sovino in the film), young Henry suddenly found himself a member of an extended family who looked out for him - especially after they found out his mother was Sicilian. He could go anywhere. He no longer had to stand in line at the Italian bakery for fresh bread on
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