My Com­fort Blan­ket Movie: Goodfellas

There are some films you watch when you need a warm hug from a famil­iar source. There’s no new ter­rain to explore, no out­side world, no alarms and no sur­pris­es – they are sim­ply sooth­ing. Since a glob­al pan­dem­ic was declared on 11 March, dai­ly life has become so strange that the solace offered by com­fort blan­ket movies is enhanced. In this series, we want to cel­e­brate them, in what­ev­er form they take.

There’s a tra­di­tion at wed­dings – if you haven’t seen it in real life, you’ve prob­a­bly seen it in a film – where the new­ly mar­ried cou­ple are intro­duced to a room full of their guests. It’s their first time enter­ing the par­ty as hus­band and wife, and music plays them in. At my own wed­ding, we helped choose the music care­ful­ly, and we had fun pick­ing a song for this par­tic­u­lar moment that might raise a know­ing smile in a few of our guests. It was Tony Bennett’s ​‘Rags to Rich­es’. The expan­sive, sweep­ing bal­lad with its soft croon always gives me a lit­tle elec­tric jolt when I hear it. And I always hear it in con­cert with one line, one open­ing sequence, and one film: Goodfellas.

For the same rea­son as it seems like an odd choice of sound­track for a wed­ding, it might seem strange to describe Mar­tin Scorsese’s gang­ster clas­sic as ​‘com­fort view­ing’. The phrase entails some­thing cosy, like a warm blan­ket. For my part, I like those sorts of films, too: Audrey Hep­burn in swirls of design­er chif­fon in Fun­ny Face, Gene Kel­ly musi­cals, Heath Ledger and his dim­ple in 10 Things I Hate About You. But com­fort implies some­thing unthreat­en­ing, right? Not a bru­tal­ly vio­lent, black­ly com­ic sto­ry of a low-lev­el mob asso­ciate turned police informer, which Scors­ese took from the real sto­ry of mafioso Hen­ry Hill.

From the very start of Good­fel­las, the bravu­ra cam­era work of the open­ing seg­ment has every inten­tion of hook­ing the view­er and keep­ing them wrig­gling on that hook. Scors­ese bam­boo­zles us with the glam­our and vic­ar­i­ous thrill of the crim­i­nal lifestyle before send­ing Hen­ry and his cohort on a steep down­ward tra­jec­to­ry. The rest­less, rov­ing cam­era, the dol­lies, the freeze-frames, the dead­pan voiceover, the fault­less doo-wop sound­track; in five min­utes it’s pure sen­so­ry over­load, visu­al sto­ry­telling on so enrap­tur­ing a lev­el that any pos­si­ble stray thought from the exter­nal world is pulverised.

On count­less occa­sions, bad or good or just ter­mi­nal­ly bored, I’ve curled up on the sofa to see the pure, unrav­el­ling id of Joe Pesci’s Tom­my and his mur­der­ous rages; Hen­ry and Tom­my bick­er­ing in the car as they com­i­cal­ly for­get to abscond from the scene of mob-sanc­tioned arson; that unfor­get­table cam­era tilt from the ground up, reveal­ing Ray Liot­ta for the first time, lean­ing on the back of his car; or the moment where Karen (Lor­raine Brac­co) bleats, ​“I thought he was obnox­ious.” And there she goes pick­ing up the voiceover, unex­pect­ed­ly and com­mand­ing­ly tak­ing charge of the story.

I’ve always had a par­tic­u­lar soft spot for Karen Hill, the ride-or-die gangster’s moll with lots of brains and a big mouth. Scors­ese unequiv­o­cal­ly presents Hen­ry and Karen as a duo, work­ing in tan­dem, and she is afford­ed a sub­jec­tiv­i­ty that goes beyond the lim­it­ed view­point of the men in this world. She explains to us exact­ly why and how she’s drawn to the mafia life, and how it excites her; she admits at one point that it ​“turns her on”.

She even tells us about her ear­ly mis­giv­ings try­ing to fit in with the oth­er mob wives, and her fears about prison. ​“Don’t play the babe in the woods rou­tine,” an FBI agent tells her lat­er in the film. He’s right: she’s no inno­cent bystander. She’s not will­ing to let go of this life eas­i­ly, what­ev­er the costs. Her char­ac­ter – and the way Brac­co plays her, full of ener­gy and crack­le – makes Good­fel­las among the most insight­ful of its genre when it comes to women.

I find myself ever more drawn to the movie – and to the gang­ster genre in gen­er­al – late­ly. There’s some­thing unde­ni­ably com­fort­ing about them, in spite of their vio­lence and ugli­ness. These are films which present a world that oper­ates by strict codes; here the lines are clear. Every­one has their place in an admit­ted­ly crooked and moral­ly cor­rupt hier­ar­chy. We under­stand how these peo­ple oper­ate, and on some lev­el we prob­a­bly wouldn’t like to admit, we can relate or project or iden­ti­fy with some­thing in them.

Maybe not the part that has them stab some­one to death in the trunk of a car. But in a loos­er sense: wouldn’t it be fun to behave so bad­ly and be reward­ed so fab­u­lous­ly for it? To be treat­ed like you were spe­cial? To have the nerve to act so deci­sive­ly in the face of betray­al or insult? It’s the same feel­ing of for­bid­den glee that audi­ences prob­a­bly had when they first saw James Cagney fall with a thud to the floor at the end of 1931’s The Pub­lic Enemy.

I once knew some­one who told me that he loved these films, films like The Pub­lic Ene­my and Good­fel­las and Blow, but that he nev­er watched the end­ings, when the bad guys got their come­up­pance. ​“They always get a hap­py end­ing if I turn the film off ear­ly,” he would say. But that’s not most of us. Most of us like the thrill of watch­ing peo­ple live out­sized lives, and the famil­iar­i­ty of know­ing exact­ly where those out­sized lives are headed.

There’s anoth­er thing that makes Good­fel­las feel par­tic­u­lar­ly com­fort­ing: famil­iar­i­ty. It’s up there with my most fre­quent­ly-watched films, and it’s been a reg­u­lar source of com­mu­nal plea­sure with peo­ple I know. Whether it’s my hus­band or my teenage sis­ter, when we’ve watched the movie togeth­er it’s impos­si­ble not to elbow one anoth­er and pre-empt our favourite lines: ​“Fuck you, pay me,” and ​“It was out­ta RESPECT.”

Now that we’re under lock­down, my sis­ter and I are sep­a­rat­ed for who-knows-how-long by a pan­dem­ic and a whole ocean. So not long after lock­down began, we decid­ed to do a week­ly Net­flix Par­ty view­ing. The app allows you to view a film in real-time togeth­er, and to com­ment on it in a side-by-side chat­box. No sur­prise that Good­fel­las was the first movie we chose, so we could type the quotes to each oth­er in all-caps instead of yelling them at each oth­er. To accom­pa­ny it, we dreamt up our own ver­sion of mob wife out­fits, drap­ing our­selves in fur and gold jew­ellery and low-cut wrap dress­es, upload­ing pho­tos and com­ment­ing on them with deep-cut quotes like: ​“One night, Bob­by Vin­ton sent us cham­pagne!” It brought us togeth­er – let us feel a sense of occa­sion and com­mu­ni­ty around moviego­ing that we won’t actu­al­ly have in per­son for a long time.

Togeth­er, we rev­elled in the lit­tle shared details and triv­ia from umpteenth view­ings, like the beau­ti­ful bow on the back on Karen’s black cock­tail dress dur­ing the Copaca­bana kitchen sequence, or the way Scorsese’s mama – play­ing Pesci’s mama in the movie – acci­den­tal­ly glances to cam­era and bursts out laugh­ing while the guys around her ad-lib, or the nod to Crazy Joe start­ing a war that Mar­ty would lat­er fol­low through on in The Irish­man.

At this point, Good­fel­las isn’t just a com­fort movie, but a whole pri­vate club that me and my loved ones can share. I think a lot of peo­ple (and there are a lot of us) who love Good­fel­las feel the same. We get to be part of some­thing – that rep­re­hen­si­ble but oh-so-thrilling secret world of gang­sters and guns and Lufthansa heists. We don’t mis­take Hen­ry or his friends for heroes, but the world’s got enough of those, anyway.