They’re sort of two days of the same mood. Both have way too much voiceover and music-video stuff to be great films. But Casino may be a more gripping movie. I’ve always liked the whole history-of-Vegas angle. And Rothstein not wearing pants in his office unless he has to is a brilliant little touch. Sharon Stone – meh. She doesn’t bring much believability to a role that seems to cry out for it — call her a fraternal sister of Gwyneth Paltrow in PTA’s Hard Eight and wonder why (to paraphrase Dorothy Parker) you can lead a whore to marriage but you can’t make her, oh something something.
I agree.
They’re rather different films in many respects. “Goodfellas” is about the middle-class level of mob life. “Casino” is about the REALLY high-rollers. It’s one of my very favorite Scorsese films. Much as I like “Goodfellas” it can’t touch “Casino” — for the opening and credit sequence alone.
The relationships between DeNior, Stone, Pesci, and Woods are multi-faceted and complex.
Ultimately it’s less a film about The Mob than an examination of late 20th Century capitalism.
No effing way.
I’m saying this as a HUGE Goodfellas stan, but I think every moment of that movie is perfect—every edit, every shot, every cue. Each beat so memorable and unique. Casino starts great but just falls apart halfway through; it sags. Still love it, but doesn’t even come close.
Yeah, David, I think you’re right. It does take a wider angle than Goodfellas.
They have different aims.
no
I mean does Casino have one moment to compare with the prison garlic slicing—a small moment that is made so unforgettable in some magic way I can’t quite understand…
I think GoodFellas is better in every way. I think it is more entertaining, more interesting, and better in a technical and artistic way. I think what makes GoodFellas great is it focuses on the (as David said) middle class of the mob, making it more original and real. I would almost say Mean Streets might be close to GoodFellas and that focuses on the lower class of the mob.
Nothing against Casino which I really like, but GoodFellas is miles ahead of it in my book.
Mean Streets is a really profound, pure film in comparison to both of them — people do crazy things in Mean Streets and you never know exactly why.
@Mark: I like the moment DeNiro goes ballistic about the number and distribution of currents in his muffin – that compares very favourably as a ‘small moment’ to the garlic slicing.
But does Casino have the better soundtrack? All those great Stones tunes.
“Mean Streets” is more personal because it’s about the brother that nobody in the family ever talks about. Not sure if he’s alive or dead.
Oh, the wild guy DeNiro plays? The film ends with you wondering whether he lives or dies, too.
I ever think that, I love’d Goodfellas, but I’d prefere Casino, the convination of violence whit Rolling Stones music, is more strong in that one.
Not to make a Casino vs. GoodFellas thread into one about Mean Streets, but I think I like it more than both. I tend to like more personal films, because I think there is the most passion from the filmmakers in these projects.
Yep, DeNiro’s “Johnny Boy”
Rumplesink
“Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci are just as good in Casino as they are in Goodfellas (admittedly playing the same parts)”
Jimmy Conway and Ace Rothstein have almost nothing in common personality wise, so I don’t know what you mean here.
“In my opinion the film says more about Americas attitude to money and greed, big business and the corruptive influence of wealth and power.”
I just think it’s more obvious about it. “Goodfellas” actually gives a social context for the violent/capitalist/sociopathic drive that guides the characters through their story (take the scene of domestic violence, Henry’s sense of entitlement among his working class neighbors, etc.) “Casino” is desiegned just as superficially as its charachters act (which, of course is the point), but I fail to see how it is “better,” and you haven’t quite explained yourself. As for “gangsters doing their gangster thing,” how exactly does that explain the 5+ detailed murder/torture scenes that Joe Pesci acts out? Casino succeeds in this exploitative way far more than “Goodfellas,” and is a lot flashier/glitsier, but I fail to see how that makes it “better.”
Not that this position is unfounded either though. Gavin Smith wrote a piece on “Casino” in 1995 where he praised Casino, compared it to Kubrick, and called “Goodfellas” “Scorsese’s most simple film.” But I didn’t think he was right then either.
Kifah
To explain about the similarity of the DeNiro/Pesci characters what I meant was basically that Pesci plays an unstable nutjob in both films whereas DeNiro plays the more in control character. It seems to me that Rothstein and Conway are similar in that sense but obviously very different in their story arc – again this is one of the reasons Casino is more interesting to me than Goodfellas…Rothstein starts off as a low-level bookie/numbers runner type character and is escalated through the course of the film to the top of the heap in a Vegas casino. Seeing how his character changes as a result of these changes in circumstances and status is fascinating, whereas in Goodfellas Conway starts off as a mid-level gangster and is the same thing at the end of the movie.
In the whole Martin Scorsese canon, they’re both second tier films in my opinion. But I’d definitely take Casino over Goodfellas any day. Even if Goodfellas is a “better” film as far as cinema mastery (whatever the hell that means), Casino is a much more fun movie to watch. And the soundtrack alone is one of the best in all of movies.
I understand your first point now,
However, Rothstein might be more interesting than Conway (indeed, in some ways he certainly is), but to gauge the film on that level seems a tad off base, Conway in Goodfellas isn’t the main character, he’s the sociopathic anchor,OR the alternate father figure, who were told is doing mob hits when he was 13, moments after seeing Henry brutally beaten by his father- a sense of where their aggression comes from. He’s meant to give the audience an idea of the violent extreme of their world, which still maintaining distance from it. Henry Hill is the main character.
I think Hill and Conway is to Rothstien and Santoro is closer to the mark, than Conway and De Vito is to Rothstien and Santoro, so in that sense I don’t quite think their roles are that similar- but the control character/ action character idea isn’t necessarily untrue either.
Conway (deNiro) is behind the whole massacre-montage set to Layla in Goodfellas. There’s an amazing closeup of DeNiro at the bar, the shot is held for what seems like minutes, where you can see the diabolical plan come into his eyes — it’s very horrifying. He even seems to laugh sadistically at his own idea to kill off all his friends.
Also, DeNiro loves Pesci in Goodfellas and can’t get enough of him — and vice versa. In Casino they clearly despise each other. Totally different dynamic.
Kifah
Yes – Jimmy Conway isn’t the main character. Again this is another reason Casino is better to me than Goodfellas because DeNiro’s much more fun to watch than Liotta and Casino really benefits from having him as the main actor. That coupled with a much more interesting character arc than either Henry Hill’s or Jimmy Conway’s (in my opinion) means we have a winner!
Justin
I disagree – I don’t think DeNiro and Pesci despise each other in Casino. Yet again that’s one of the more interesting things about Casino to me; they like each other at the beginning of the film and the change in status between them as the film progresses drives them apart as time goes on. In the end they don’t like each other. Incidentally the scene in Goodfellas you describe is an absolutely fantastic scene!
I praise the interaction between DeNiro and Pesci in Raging Bull over either Goodfellas or Casino.
I prefer the epic sweep of Casino and its matter-of-fact storytelling to Goodfella’s quasi-documentary approach, punctuated with all that flash-bam-pow editing, which is, of course, well-suited to the material.
That said, the two are very different films and Scorsese was unfairly criticized for making “Goodfellas in Vegas” simply because he chose to cast and work with the same two trusted actors in two films about gangsters. The characters couldn’t be more different.
Oh…Sharon Stone was cast for the star wattage, as she was still hot in the four years following Basic Instinct. I can think of a dozen actresses who could have played that role as well or better, tho’ don’t forget she did get an Oscar nod, so somebody thinks Ms. Stone can act.
(SPOILER)
On a semi-related note, the end of Joe Pesci’s character Nicky Santoro and his bruddah, Dominic, is as stomach-churning as anything I have seen in the cinema, and I have seen a few violent films in my day. First time, I was shaken and sickened by the thump of the baseball bats and was instantly reminded of the monkeyshines in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when one unfortunate man-chimp tries to bully his way to the local watering hole and gets a savage reprisal for his troubles.
Cheers,
Steve
www.CinemaUprising.Blogspot.com
Isn’t it fantastic? You can see lack of sleep, paranoia, sadism, and that middle class need for security all converge in De Niro’s eyes (plus alcohol).
Where do they like each other in Casino? That’s a myth. From the beginning, Pesci is all like, “I was sent out there to watch over the Jew.” And from the beginning Rothstein is properly resentful. He negotiates Pesci — he knows he can’t just blow him off. But their entire relationship is one of being thrown together more or less.
One of the things that Scorsese deals with better than Coppola in his gangster movies is the control that the mob apparently exerts on the personal lives of its members — not just family, but the whole extended “family.”
Justin
…But I think they find a use for each other as the film progresses – maybe this isn’t ‘liking each other’ in the traditional sense but they quickly become symbiotic, as it were. This dynamic that they each silently agree to and become comfortable with becomes unteneble towards the end of the film though, and they end up resenting each other. Still much more interesting than any relationship from Goodfellas if you ask me.
I can’t see it that way but I guess I can see how someone could. Probably Pesci’s most humane act toward DeNiro is to take his side against Stone when she goes off her own deep end — but even there he’s also covering his own ass.
Saw Goodfellas on the big screen in 1990 and thought it was astounding. Never saw violence like that before. Instant masterpiece, etc. But Casino is a better film: more scope, more complex characterisation, and the style of direction and editing is at a whole other level to Goodfellas. I’m going to say that if Goodfellas is Scorsese’s Citizen Kane…(hear me out here), then Casino is his full 136 minute version Magnificent Ambersons.
I’m with Neil McCauley’s Bro – *Casino*’s length means much in the consideration of the film. I say this with Godfather Part II and Prince of the City – and now that I think of it, the really sprawling Once Upon a Time in America – in mind. I think that Casino is part of a set comprised of those films—and that they’re all masterpieces. (But not that this takes away one tiny bit from the perfect quality of Goodfellas!)
McBean
It’s been my experience in the past that if I make this statement it’s met with either disbelief, contempt or derision. However I’ve always admired – and certainly enjoyed – Casino more than Goodfellas. That’s not to say I dislike Goodfellas at all. On the contrary I love it, and I realise there’s a lot of Goodfellas in Casino, but all things considered I’d pick Casino over Goodfellas if I had to make a choice. In my opinion the film says more about Americas attitude to money and greed, big business and the corruptive influence of wealth and power. Goodfellas was really just about gangsters doing their gangster thing. Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci are just as good in Casino as they are in Goodfellas (admittedly playing the same parts) but I would take Sharon Stone’s performance in Casino over Lorraine Braco’s in Goodfellas any day. I won’t bore you all with all the other reasons I prefer Casino but I’d be interested in hearing everyone else’s reasons for liking one over the other. (Apologies if there’s been a post similar to this one already).