Analysis of Goodfellas (1990), by Director Martin Scorsese, starring Ray Liotta, Robert Deniro and Joe Pesci.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBohe2dezjM
The movie is seen and narrated from Henry’s (Ray Liotta) point of view an Irish and Sicilian child who joins the mob and starts a dazzling “gangster” life of the underworld. Occasionally his wife, Karen (Lorraine Bracco)voice-over point of view is heard to provide further insight into their “Mafia” lifestyle. Freeze frames are also used to emphasize the unforgettable, impressionable moments in Henry’s life such as when he gets a whopping from his father for missing school in order to work at the cabstand. The film progresses in segments from his teenage years in East New York, Brooklyn 1950’s, to his ear adulthood when Henry (Liotta) becomes a full pledged gangster living the lavish lifestyle of the mobster, in Queen’s New York 1970’s and finally to his arrest and witness protection life in the 1980’s when he eventually breaks the code of “never ratting on your friends” and becomes an FBI informant so as to save his life and goes into the witness protection program.
The film begins with an opening inol Medias res,by bringing the viewer’s to a line of action that had already started which causes the viewer to speculate on the possible causes of the events. The scene shows Henry(Liotta), Jimmy(Deniro), Tommy(Pesci) driving in a car when they hear loud noises from within the vehicle and pullover to investigate the cause of the noise. They open the trunk which contains a terribly bloodied man(“Billy”, one of the “wise guys”), who Pesci then proceeds to horridly, repeatedly stab the and Deniro Shoots the limb body. This opening raises our expectations on what is to come and initiates viewers into the narrative. From this scene also a motif of their character trait is created as we see a persistent presence of similarity and repetition of their mobster’s character recurring in the movie. Not only do they kill...