By Justin Sayles, theringer.com
Sept. 17, 2020
Ahead of Goodfellas turning 30 on Saturday, The Ringer looks back on the moments that define the movie in all of its complex, violent, darkly comedic glory.
Tommy DeVito (played by Joe Pesci in his loudest and most brilliant role) has just walked into his mother’s house in Queens with his cohorts Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro playing an Irishman long before he played the Irishman) and Henry Hill (Ray Liotta, the viewer’s eyes and ears for this detour to Astoria). The trio has also brought along Billy Batts, though he stays outside—more specifically, in the trunk of a sedan, slowly bleeding out as punishment for telling Tommy to get his shinebox. It’s 3 a.m. and the men need to grab a shovel to dispose of Batts. But there’s one small holdup: Their arrival has awakened Tommy’s mom, who misses her son. She offers them food. They protest. One jump cut later they’re seated at her dinner table, surrounded by pasta, bread, wine, and eggs and potatoes for Jimmy to slather with ketchup. (He’s Irish, you see.) We don’t see how she persuaded them, but anyone who’s spent time around an Italian American home knows the truth: It’s impossible to leave one without a full stomach.
Toward the end of the late-night feast, Mrs. DeVito switches subjects from her son’s love life and Henry’s quietness. “Did Tommy ever tell you about my painting?” she asks. And then, as if she had been waiting months for this exact moment, she pulls it out from beneath the table. And there’s John Weaving, Brocky, and Twiggy on a boat in all of their oil-painted glory. Like much of the scene, the painting is very real, in a sense: It was done by the mother of Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote the book Goodfellas was based on and who cowrote the film’s screenplay with Scorsese. And truthfully, it’s very well done—Mrs. Pileggi captured the stoic gentleness of Weaving that comes across in Woolfitt’s original National Geographic photo, as well as the majesty of the dogs and the serene beauty of the Shannon’s marsh. But serious art demands serious art criticism, and that’s exactly what comes next.
Brilliant. No subtext, or maybe it’s all subtext. Or maybe the subtext is the man dying in the trunk. (As Jimmy says, “Looks like somebody we know,” shortly before the table descends into a sea of cackles and the camera pans to the trunk of the car.) Part of the joke here is the characters’ primitive means of discussing the painting. But with their improvised dialogue, Pesci, De Niro, and Mrs. Scorsese create a piece of art worthy of all the praise, dissection, and discussion it’s received. (Its influence also looms large: David Chase has cited it as one of the greatest inspirations on The Sopranos, saying that he learned a lot from the brutal but hilarious nature of the scene.)
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