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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 3 page paper compares Scorsese's films "Goodfellas" and "Casino" and argues that the characters in the former are more real and grounded than the glitzy Las Vegas denizens in the latter. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVScorse.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
life, and to the underworld. This paper discusses two of his films, Goodfellas and Casino, and argues that the "wiseguys" of the first film are much more "real" than the
glitzy Vegas types of the second. Discussion We begin with Leonard Quart, writing in Cineaste, who says that "Scorseses Goodfellas is arguably one of the best films ever made on
the social milieu and values of the Mafia" (Quart). Coppolas Godfather films may have been larger in scope, as they tried to trace immigrant history from arrival to success in
America, but their overblown style "aggrandizes and distorts the daily reality of that ethos" (Quart). Goodfellas, however, is not a slick opera but a realistic look at the Mafia soldiers
"whose limited lives and sensibilities lack a tragic dimension, and whose successes and failures are not linked grandly and metaphorically with the fate of the American dream" (Quart). Because
they are "ordinary" (despite their extraordinary career choice), they are familiar to us, perhaps alarmingly so. Henry Hull (Ray Liotta) is the films protagonist; a "working class boy growing up
in East New York" who "dreams of being a gangster like the guys who hang out across the street" (Quart). The movie traces Hulls career from his beginnings as an
errand boy to a "coke and gun dealer" (Quart). This is a twisted version of the American dream. Scorsese populates this film with his usual cast of sociopaths and
psychopaths; Tommy De Vito (Joe Pesci) is one of the wildest characters ever to grace the screen. He is a "mix of inarticulate innocence, intuitiveness, and violent paranoia -- but
Tommys wild, murderous outbursts are both genuinely frightening and touched with black comedy" (Quart). In one of the films blackest, and possibly funniest, scenes, Tommy, Henry and Jimmy "stop off
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