Money, murder, power, and loyalty, the epitome and basic essentials of any Mafia movie. Initially, when watching two of the most popular titles in this genre, Goodfellas and The Godfather, they may have similar themes, but in all truth, they are on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. While Goodfellas welcomes you to the family with a friendly smile and a voice-over, The Godfather makes you stand astray and watch in silence as an outsider.
Loyalty, the root of any mob family, something that Francis Coppola’s, The Godfather so strongly believes in, whereas Martin Scorsese’s, Goodfellas is more of a fend for yourself type of atmosphere. The Corleone family sets up loyalty as if it was a commandment. Whether it is staying loyal to one’s commitment or to the family.
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If one was to step outside the thin line of this obligatory trust, an imminent death is close by. The opening scene of The Godfather is a real eye opener for the viewer, defining what loyalty means to the Corleone family. Within the first scene, a man approaches Vito Corleone, the Godfather, with a favor at hand, offering the Godfather a nice amount of money. Declining, and taking the offer as an insult, the Godfather insists on being rewarded with the man’s loyalty, hinting that a man’s word is far more valuable than money. On the other hand, as you ride along in Goodfellas, you will soon get the sense that loyalty struggles to stay afloat. For example, Paul Cicero insists Henry to stray away from drug trafficking, giving you the underlying thought of, ‘if you get caught, I get caught’. But within the next few scenes, one can see the exact opposite of what the warning was. Henry is in fact deeply involved in the drug business. Although, there is a sense of camaraderie among the protagonist and his crew, he is slow to realize that murders come with smiles. Loyalty is portrayed differently in these two movies. In The Godfather, loyalty is demanded, expected and held to a high standard, while in Goodfellas, loyalty can be achieved, but it can also be a false perception. Equally important, is the style of how the two films are portrayed.
Goodfellas is a narrative, which enhances the viewer’s personal engagement and tends to draw the viewer into the movie, showing the viewer a sort of real, and uncensored life of an actual gangster, stripping away the sugarcoated mentality The Godfather portrays. The Godfather fails to bring you into the regal and almost fairy tale like family where they seem to romanticize being a gangster, although, the movies main story is about family itself and less about the Mafia. Through hearing Henry’s spoken words, the viewer watches each scene with Henry’s particular perspective. If there was no voice-over, the viewer would have to decide for themselves how to perceive to the images shown, which is what the viewer has to do while watching The Godfather. Although, the two films may fall under the same genre of crime and drama, The Godfather seems to aim for a more romanticized and epic gangster flick, where you watch from afar and have to observe every action of the main characters in silence. Goodfellas aims to show you the real sense of being a gangster in the later years of the century, as it portrays more gruesome and gory
scenes. Lastly, the way that violence is depicted in the film has no comparison whatsoever. This alone is probably one of the biggest contrasting points that the two films have. The Godfather has a total of 18 murders, but the way that The Godfather portrays violence is worlds away from how Goodfellas portrays it. Goodfellas only has five, the five murders that Goodfellas has is beyond gruesome. Even though Goodfellas has less than that, only five murders in all, from the first scene violence is a present and repeating factor in the movie. As Americans we generally tend to cheer for the good guys. We love to see those who are fighting for what’s right win, but
The characters in these films were savvy, secretive and wealthy unlike the gangsters seen in Little Caesar and Scarface: The Shame of the Nation. Brian De Palma’s Scarface (1983) payed homage to the original, and although they follow roughly the same storyline, De Palma’s remake is more reminiscent of The Godfather films than its predecessor. Tony Montana (Al Pacino), the film’s main character, worked his way up from poverty by selling drugs and committing horrifying acts of violence in order to attain the power, wealth and woman he so desired. In his 1983 review of Scarface, Pulitzer prize winner, Roger Ebert states “Al Pacino does not make Montana into a sympathetic character, but he does make him into somebody we can identify with, in a horrified way, if only because of his perfectly understandable motivations” (RogerEbert.com). More than fifty years later, Ebert expresses similar thoughts to those of Robert Warshow, esteemed film critic and author of “The Gangster as a Tragic Hero.” “…We [the audience] gain the double satisfaction of participating vicariously in the gangster’s sadism and then seeing it turned against the gangster himself.” (Warshow) These sentiments are exactly what the censorship of the 1932 version intended to prevent, yet Scarface (1983) did not receive the same scrutiny. Despite the mixed reviews that Howard Hawk’s original Scarface: Shame of the Nation and Brian De Palma’s
1. Though the initial reviews were mixed, time has proven the firm’s popular appeal. More than twenty years after its release. Scarface continues to be a rental favorite, a standard campus feature, and a late-night TV standard. How can the notion of the general welfare be used to justify giving big bucks to the stars making the film: actor Al Pacino, director Brian De Palma, and writer Oliver Stone?
The story begins as "Don" Vito Corleone, the head of a New York Mafia "family", oversees his daughter's wedding. His beloved son Michael has just come home from the war, but does not intend to become part of his father's business. Drug dealer Virgil Sollozzo is looking for Mafia Families to offer him protection in exchange for a profit of the drug money. He approaches Don Corleone about it, but the Don is morally against the use of drugs, and turns down the offer. Being this only request Don Vito has turned down, displease Sollozzo and has the Don shot down. The Don barely survives, which leads ...
He didn’t go too much in detail, but I think he should have just so the reader can have a better understanding on how a gangster that is stereotype, but still manage to impact the viewers and become the “king of a city.” This gangster name Tony Montana was a cocaine trafficker from Cuba that came to the US trying to find a way to get financially stable. The movie started by showing him as a successful man, but no one knew how he was able to get that fame. That just made the watchers want to know how exactly he got to be that successful. They begin to understand that he was a cocaine trafficker, but that just made the viewer’s idolize him even more. That’s ironic because when it’s someone in a local city selling drugs, then they must be a bad person, or viewed as a wrongdoer. Come to find out, the beginning of the movie was really the ending. The scene they showed in the beginning was the same scene at the end of the movie. He had asked to be left alone and according to Robert, when left alone as a successful man in a gangster film you are about to be killed, but why? Is it just because he is a gangster? It’s not right that people think just because someone is a gangster and has money then he is destined to
It is the Godfather that demands the family stick with family and never side with any one out side of the family no matter the situation. Vito the Godfather would remind them family is family and no one will miss treat or use any member of the family. He proves this point when his godson comes to him about a problem with a director name Jack Woltz. Because Jonny Fontane is the godson the Godfather Corleone will send his step son who is consigliere to the family to California to advise the director to hand the part over to Fontane.
Tommy gun shootouts, big cities full of crime, and a mob boss in a smoke filled room. These are all things that one might think of when referring to a gangster film. However, many fail to see the underlying traits that most of these “cold hearted killers” possess. Take the movie The Godfather for instance. Yes, the Corleone family do kill and cheat in their personal lives and operations, but beneath all that is a sense of loyalty, determination, and business sense. Now, that’s not to say that it justifies any of their lawless actions, but nobody can deny that they know how to get things done. Very rarely do we ever see a poor gangster, and that is for good reason. The classic “Gangster” as portrayed in movies is essentially the ultimate businessman who finds himself on the opposite side of the law.
The film begins with a wedding, and this setting sets the stage for the basic theme of the movie, which is family. ?The Godfather?, isn?t necessarily about organized crime. Crime is merely the family business, and crime is the way in which the author of the novel in which this film is based on used to set up the interactions and conflicts between the members of the Corleone family. In fact, this film could probably work even without the Mafia themes. At heart it is just a movie about the structure of a family from generation to generation.
The Godfather is the “dark-side of the American dream story” (Turan, pp2). The film follows the practices of a fictional Italian mafia family, the Corleone’s. Though most Americans do not condone the practices of the Italian mafia, they cannot deny that Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather is a cinematic masterpiece. This film gave insight to a mysterious way of life that the average person does not have knowledge of. As the audience is educated about the mafia they also are introduced to many stereotypes.
Different groups of the Mafia are called “families” because all of the members are related. Each family is led by a capo, or boss, whose authority is very absolute. Some caps may be called “godfathers” because the capo serves as a godfather for children of members of the “family.” Most Mafia leaders own legitimate businesses. Ownership does not involve racketeering, because running a business honestly allows owners to receive respectability (or at least a bluff). Underneath the boss is the sottocapo, or underboss, and a consigliere, or counselor. The consigliere is an older member of the “fa...
The Godfather is most notably one of the most prolific films of its time. This "gangster" film displayed many transformations of permeating color to give the viewer observable cues in its mise en scene that drew one right into the movie. The dramatic acting set the tone of the film with a score that lifted the viewer right out of their seat in many scenes. The directing and cinematography made The Godfather ahead of its time. The nostalgic feel of family importance and the danger of revenge lets us into the life of the Mafia. Even though no other techniques would have given the viewer a feeling of inside the mob like the mise en scene of the power the godfather held, the characters are reinforced literally and figuratively because the story views the Mafia from the inside out, and the cinematography of the film gives it a dangerous and nostalgic feel.
Scarface and Public Enemies are both brilliantly written gangster films. Both are based off the lives of real people; Public Enemies tells the final years of infamous gangster John Dillinger while Scarface is loosely based off of the Italian gangster, Al Capone. Since both movies are gangster genre films, they have a lot in common. While both contain guns, violence, and action they also differ in many ways as well. In Scarface, the violence is not shown as much. Viewers won’t see bullets hit a person, any blood or guts, or anyone with cuts or bruises. In Public Enemies, the amount of violence is much more gory and viewers always see people being shot with blood pouring out of them. Death is also more exaggerated in Public Enemies for example,
The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola is a movie about the lives of an Italian American family affiliated with the mafia during the 1940’s. The movies main character, Michael Corleone is faced with many ethical and moral decisions that completely consume his life sacrificing his beliefs in order protect the “family” that his father has built. Through his trials and tribulations, Michael’s egoism, morality and paranoia sets into motion a destructive force that eliminates any chance of contentment that he may have once hoped to have.
The Italian Mafia in the United States was an organized crime group with Sicilian roots. The Mafia is naturally very secretive and violent. The mafia is also somewhat kin-oriented. Although the women of the family do not participate in Mafia business, but enjoy the luxuries provided by her husband’s money and status and willingly assist in hiding fugitives, and shelter Mafia assets from the power of the state. By the 1930’s the U.S. Mafia surpassed other organized crime organisations in firepower and discipline.
The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, is a family mafia story established through an analogy of the pre- and post- World War II gang scene, filled with organized crime in America. Set in 1940’s New York, The Godfather ultimately changed the viewpoint on American culture at the time, emphasizing the importance of tradition and respect, and how defying society’s expectations can pose a threat to those seeking the American Dream, a stark contrast from the revolutionary 70s.