Goodfellas 1990 Full Movie

[Bridget Peral]

Scorsese initially titled the film Wise Guy and postponed making it; he and Pileggi later changed the title to Goodfellas. To prepare for their roles in the film, De Niro, Pesci and Liotta often spoke with Pileggi, who shared research material left over from writing the book. According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals wherein Scorsese gave the actors freedom to do whatever they wanted. The director made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines he liked most and put them into a revised script, which the cast worked from during principal photography.

Goodfellas premiered at the 47th Venice International Film Festival on September 9, 1990, where Scorsese was awarded with the Silver Lion award for Best Director, and was released in the United States on September 19, 1990, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film grossed $47 million against a budget of $25 million. Goodfellas received widespread acclaim upon release; the critical consensus on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes calls it "arguably the high point of Martin Scorsese's career". The film was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, with Pesci winning Best Supporting Actor. The film also won five awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, including Best Film and Best Director, and was named the year's best film by various critics' groups.

Goodfellas is widely regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, particularly in the gangster genre. In 2000, it was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress.[5][6] Its content and style have been emulated in numerous other pieces of media.[7]

In 1955, Henry Hill becomes enamored of the criminal life and Mafia presence in his working class Italian-American neighborhood in Brooklyn. He begins working for local caporegime Paulie Cicero and his associates Jimmy "the Gent" Conway, an Irish-American truck hijacker and gangster, and Tommy DeVito, a fellow juvenile delinquent. Henry begins as a fence for Jimmy, gradually working his way up to more serious crimes. The three associates spend most of their nights in the 1960s at the Copacabana nightclub carousing with women. Henry starts dating Karen Friedman, a Jewish woman who is initially troubled by Henry's criminal activities; seduced by Henry's glamorous lifestyle, she marries him despite her parents' disapproval.

In 1970, Billy Batts, a made man in the Gambino crime family recently released from prison, insults Tommy at a nightclub owned by Henry; in response, Tommy and Jimmy beat, stab, and fatally shoot Billy. Realizing that the unsanctioned murder of a made man would invite retribution, Jimmy, Henry, and Tommy bury the body in Upstate New York. Six months later, Jimmy learns that the burial site is slated for development, prompting them to exhume and relocate the decomposing corpse.

In 1974, Karen harasses Henry's mistress, Janice, and threatens Henry at gunpoint. Henry moves in with Janice, but Paulie insists that he should return to Karen after collecting a debt from a gambler in Tampa with Jimmy. Upon returning, Jimmy and Henry are arrested after being turned in by the gambler's sister, an FBI typist, and receive ten-year prison sentences. To support his family on the outside, Henry has Karen smuggle in drugs which he sells to a fellow inmate from Pittsburgh.

By 1980, Henry develops a cocaine habit and becomes a paranoid wreck. He sets up another drug deal with his Pittsburgh associates, but is arrested by narcotics agents and incarcerated. After bailing him out, Karen explains that she flushed $60,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet to prevent FBI agents from finding it during their raid, leaving them penniless. Feeling betrayed by Henry's drug dealing, Paulie gives him $3,200 and ends their association.

Karen goes to Jimmy for help, but flees when she suspects he has set a trap to murder her. Henry meets Jimmy at a diner and is asked to travel on a hit assignment, but the novelty of such a request makes him suspicious. Realizing that Jimmy also plans to have him killed, Henry finally decides to become an informant and enroll, with his family, into the witness protection program. Henry gives sufficient testimony and evidence in court to have Paulie and Jimmy convicted, and the protection program moves the Hills to a nondescript suburban neighborhood. Henry describes his unhappiness in leaving his exciting and turbulent gangster life, now condemned to live the rest of his life as a boring, average "schnook".

Goodfellas is based on New York crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi's book Wiseguy.[9] Martin Scorsese did not intend to make another Mafia film, but he saw a review of Pileggi's book, which he then read while working on The Color of Money in 1986.[10][11] He had always been fascinated by the mob lifestyle and was drawn to Pileggi's book because he thought it was the most honest portrayal of gangsters he had ever read.[12] After reading the book, Scorsese knew what approach he wanted to take: "To begin Goodfellas like a gunshot and have it get faster from there, almost like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer. I think it's the only way you can really sense the exhilaration of the lifestyle, and to get a sense of why a lot of people are attracted to it."[13] According to Pileggi, Scorsese cold-called the writer and told him, "I've been waiting for this book my entire life," to which Pileggi replied, "I've been waiting for this phone call my entire life."[14][15]

Scorsese decided to postpone making the film when funds materialized in 1988 to make The Last Temptation of Christ. He was drawn to the documentary aspects of Pileggi's book. "The book [Wiseguy] gives you a sense of the day-to-day life, the tedium, how they work, how they take over certain nightclubs, and for what reasons. It shows how it's done."[14] He saw Goodfellas as the third film in an unplanned trilogy of films that examined the lives of Italian Americans "from slightly different angles."[16] He has often described the film as "a mob home movie" that is about money, because "that's what they're really in business for."[12] Two weeks in advance of the filming, the real Henry Hill was paid $480,000.[17]

Once Robert De Niro agreed to play Jimmy Conway, Scorsese was able to secure the money needed to make the film.[11] Ray Liotta, who played Henry Hill, had read Pileggi's book when it came out and was fascinated by it. A couple of years afterward, his agent told him Scorsese was going to direct a film adaptation. In 1988, Liotta met Scorsese over a period of a couple of months and auditioned for the film.[12] He campaigned aggressively for a role, though Warner Bros. Pictures wanted a well-known actor; he later said, "I think they would've rather had Eddie Murphy than me."[19] Scorsese cast Liotta after De Niro saw him in Jonathan Demme's Something Wild (1986); Scorsese was surprised by "his explosive energy" in that film.[16] Al Pacino[20] and John Malkovich were considered for the role of Conway, and Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, Val Kilmer, and Tom Cruise were considered for the role of Hill.[21][22][23]

To prepare for the role, De Niro consulted with Pileggi, who had research material that had been discarded while writing the book.[24] De Niro often called Hill several times a day to ask how Burke walked, held his cigarette, and so on.[25][26] Driving to and from the set, Liotta listened to FBI audio cassette tapes of Hill, so he could practice speaking like his real-life counterpart.[26] Madonna was considered for the role of Karen Hill.[21] To research her role, Lorraine Bracco tried to get close to a mob wife but was unable to due to the insular nature of Mafia communities. She decided not to meet the real Karen, saying she "thought it would be better if the creation came from me."[27] Paul Sorvino had no problem finding the voice and walk of his character, but found it challenging to find what he called "that kernel of coldness and absolute hardness that is antithetical to my nature except when my family is threatened."[28]

Former EDNY prosecutor Edward A. McDonald appeared in the film as himself, re-creating the conversation he had with Henry and Karen Hill about joining the Witness Protection Program. McDonald, who was friends with Pileggi, was cast on a whim; while a location scout was taking pictures of his office, McDonald casually remarked that he would be happy to play himself if needed. Pileggi called him an hour later asking if he was serious, and he was cast. The scene was unscripted, with McDonald improvising the line referring to Karen as a "babe-in-the-woods."[29]

Joe Pesci did not judge his character, but found the scene where he kills Spider hard to do until he forced himself to feel the way Tommy did.[12] Bracco found the shoot to be an emotionally difficult one because of the male-dominated cast, and realized if she did not make her "work important, it would probably end up on the cutting room floor."[12] When it came to the relationship between Henry and Karen, Bracco saw no difference between an abused wife and her character.[12]

The long tracking shot through the Copacabana nightclub came about because of a practical problem: the filmmakers could not get permission to go in the short way, and this forced them to go round the back.[3] Scorsese decided to film the sequence in one unbroken shot in order to symbolize that Henry's entire life was ahead of him, commenting, "It's his seduction of her [Karen] and it's also the lifestyle seducing him."[3] This sequence was shot eight times.[32]

Scorsese wanted to depict the film's violence realistically, "cold, unfeeling and horrible. Almost incidental."[11] However, he had to remove 10 frames of blood to ensure an R rating from the MPAA.[16] Goodfellas was Scorsese's most expensive film to that point but still only a medium-sized budget by Hollywood standards. It was also the first time he was obliged by Warner to preview the film. At two preview screenings in California, audiences were "agitated" by the sequence depicting Henry's final day as a gangster, which Scorsese argued was his and editor Thelma Schoonmaker's intention.[3] In the first test screening, forty audience members walked out in the first ten minutes.[32] One of the favorite scenes for test audiences was the "Funny like a clown? Do I amuse you?" scene.[3]

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