Summary
We hear the sound of cars whizzing along a road as the credits play. We are in New York City and the year is 1970. We see three men in a car together driving on the highway. The driver asks one of the men, named Jimmy, if he hit something, as the sound of something being dragged by the car can be heard. They speculate about whether they hit something or a flat tire, and the man in the backseat urges the driver to pull over and check. The three men get out of the car and look at it, when they realize that the thumping is coming from the trunk; a person they thought was dead is alive and trying to get out. The third man, who had been sleeping in the backseat of the car, takes out a large knife from his jacket pocket as they prepare to open the trunk. The driver goes and opens the trunk to reveal a horribly bloodied man, nearly dead, struggling to speak. The man with the knife lunges towards the half-dead man and stabs him repeatedly, exclaiming “He’s still alive!” frustratedly. He then shoots the man repeatedly to make sure that he is dead. We see the driver of the car closing the trunk of the car, and hear him in voiceover as he says, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” This is Henry: our protagonist.
We then see him as a young boy, as he continues in voiceover, “To me, being a gangster was better than being president of the United States,” as a subtitle tells us we are in East New York, Brooklyn, in 1955. He narrates that the allure of being a gangster had to do with “being a somebody in a neighborhood that was full of nobodies.” The young man watches some gangsters from his bedroom window, and marvels at their privileges in society; gangsters can double park, they can play cards all night without someone calling the police. Gangsters get out of fancy cars and greet one another as the young narrator watches from his window. We see one gangster in particular, Tuddy Cicero, who “ran the cab stand and the Bella Vista Pizzeria and a few others for his brother, Paul, who was the boss over everybody in the neighborhood.” We see another gangster, an intimidating looking man who the narrator identifies as “Paulie.” We then see Henry's home life, a house full of kids and an overworked mother, as he tells us that at first his family was happy that he found a job across the street, because his father—an Irishman—thought it showed initiative. We see Henry going off to work, as he narrates how happy he was at this time, to be young, free, and to know everyone in the neighborhood. We see him parking cars for the gangsters across the street.
Henry then narrates that his parents soon began to disapprove of his job at the cabstand, since it started becoming more like a full-time position. “See people like my father could never understand, but I was a part of something,” he narrates, as we see Tuddy giving Henry a message to bring to someone. The scene shifts to Henry’s house, as Henry narrates that his father was always pissed off. His father approaches him about a letter from the school informing him that Henry has been skipping school regularly, suddenly bursting into a violent rage, hitting Henry violently with a belt as his mother tries to stop him. “You wanna grow up to be a bum?!” he yells at his son as his mother screams. He narrates that every once in awhile his father beat him up, but it didn’t bother him much, because in his estimation, everybody “takes a beating sometime.” Abruptly, the scene shifts to the young Henry telling Tuddy that he can’t work for him anymore. Tuddy is indignant, telling Henry that he has to keep making deliveries or he’ll “fuck everything up.” When Henry draws attention to his black eye, saying that his father will kill him if he stays, Tuddy takes him outside. We see Henry sitting in a car with some gangsters watching some postmen come out of the post office. Henry points out his postman, and two gangsters grab the unsuspecting worker and pull him into the car. They take the postman to a pizzeria, where they beat him up a little and threaten him, urging him not to bring any more letters from the school to Henry’s house. The postman agrees as they threaten to put his head in a pizza oven if he doesn’t comply.
As the scene shifts to show Henry running through a heavy rainfall holding an umbrella, he narrates, “How could I go to school after that and pledge allegiance to the flag, and sit through good government bullshit?” They run up to Paulie’s door to deliver a message from a caller, as Henry tells us that Paulie didn’t like having a phone in his house. “Then you’d call the people back from an outside phone,” he tells us. We see a picnic lunch, and a bunch of gangsters eating together outside as a bit of news gets passed around between them. Henry tells us that whenever there is a problem, ”only the top guys can meet with Paulie to discuss it…Paulie hated conferences.” He then explains that a cut of any money that the gangsters made was given to Paulie as tribute, “just like in the old country except it was here in America.” He goes on, as the camera zooms in on Paulie at the picnic: “All they got from Paulie was protection from other guys looking to rip them off. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what the FBI could never understand. That what Paulie and the organization does is offer protection for people who can’t go to the cops. That’s it, that’s all there is. They’re like the police department for wiseguys.”
We suddenly see young Henry breaking car windows with a crowbar and emptying bucketfuls of gasoline onto the seats, as he narrates in voiceover that people treated him differently once he started running with the mob—“I didn’t have to wait in line on Sunday mornings anymore for fresh bread.” As the young Henry lights the cars on fire and runs away from the parking lot briskly, cars exploding in the background, he tells us that at 13, he was making more money than most adults in his neighborhood. We see him arriving at his family’s doorstep in a new suit and shoes. As his mother opens the door, young Henry is very proud of himself, but his mother is repulsed and says, “My God, you look like a gangster.” Abruptly we see a recently shot man staggering towards the pizzeria, as young Henry wraps his wounds with an apron and narrates that this was the first time he’d ever seen someone who’d been shot. Tuddy scolds young Henry for wasting aprons on the shot man, as Henry watches the man taken off by some men into an ambulance.
The scene shifts and we see young Henry making a sandwich in a smoke-filled restaurant where men sit around and play cards. “It was a glorious time, and wise guys were all over the place,” he tells us in narration, adding, “It was when I first met Jimmy Conway.” Jimmy Conway enters and pulls out a wad of cash. Young Henry marvels at Jimmy’s swagger and power in the mob. As Jimmy begins to gamble, Paulie introduces him to Henry, and Jimmy slips him some cash. “Jimmy was one of the most feared guys in the city. He was first locked up when he was 11 and he was doing hits for mob bosses when he was 16,” Henry narrates. He then tells us that Jimmy had no problem with killing people because he just saw it as business, before telling us that Jimmy’s greatest love was stealing. We see Jimmy stealing a truckdriver’s wallet and Henry tells us that Jimmy “was one of the city’s biggest hijackers, of booze, cigarettes, razor blades, shrimp and lobsters.” The scene shifts and we see Jimmy taking cigarettes out of the back of a delivery truck. Jimmy calls Henry over to the cigarette truck and introduces him to another young man, named Tommy. A cop car pulls up and tries to confront Jimmy, but he just hands them a carton of cigarettes with some money tucked into it to buy them off and they drive away.
Henry is selling cartons of cigarettes to men in front of a factory, when two law enforcement officers confront him. He tries to buy them off by selling them some cigarettes, but they won’t hear of it. Tommy runs upstairs nearby to tell Paulie that “Henry got pinched.” We see Henry in court, but he’s let off easy. Jimmy walks up next to him and congratulates him, slipping some money into his breast pocket. Confused, Henry asks why he’s getting congratulated if he got “pinched,” and Jimmy tells him, “Everybody gets pinched, but you did it right. You told them nothing and they got nothing.” Henry is surprised that Jimmy isn’t mad at him, but Jimmy insists, “You took your first pinch like a man and learned the 2 greatest things in life: never rat on your friends and always keep your mouth shut.” As Henry and Jimmy come out of the courtroom, a group of mobsters are waiting for him, and they applaud with pride, Tuddy saying, “You broke your cherry!” like a proud father. They all hug and congratulate him.
The scene shifts and we see a grown-up Henry at the airport, where he is waiting for the arrival of some new shipments to hijack. He stands beside another man smoking a cigarette, as his voiceover narrates, “By the time I grew up there was 30 billion a year in cargo moving through Idlewild Airport, and believe me, we tried to steal every bit of it.” He tells us that Paulie basically had control of the airport, and that all of the gangsters’ family members worked for or around the airport, so could give them tips about the next shipments coming in. He adds that “Whenever we needed money, we’d rob the airport. To us it was better than Citibank.” He tells us, “There was Jimmy and Tommy and me,” as the camera moves inside a dimly lit nightclub. We see a number of men who greet Henry as he enters: Anthony Stabile, Franky Carbone, Fat Andy, Franky the Wop, Freddy No Nose, Pete the Killer, Nickey Eyes, Mikey Franzese, and Jimmy Two Times. Henry brings a rack full of coats into the backroom, but a gangster scolds him for bringing in fur coats in the middle of the summer. We then see Henry sitting at a long table as he talks about the fact that the lifestyle of the gangster was preferable to the life of people who simply went to work every day on the subway and worried about their bills—“if we wanted something, we just took it,” he says.
Suddenly a man comes into the nightclub, and Henry stands abruptly. He looks over at Jimmy who anxiously stands and comes to talk to Henry and the man, whose name is Frenchy. Frenchy tells them there’s a “big score coming from Air France.” He explains that the score is completely untraceable and could bring in a half a million dollars. Jimmy thinks it sounds like a good idea. At the nearby table, one of the gangsters, Tommy, is telling a story about a run-in he had with the cops, which makes the men laugh raucously. Henry laughs and tells Tommy that he’s funny, but this makes him defensive. “You mean the way I talk, what?” he asks. As Henry tries to explain that he just thinks Tommy is a funny storyteller, Tommy becomes more curious and defensive: “Funny how?” He is annoyed at the thought that perhaps he is nothing more than an entertaining clown to the other men. Henry is dumbstruck, when suddenly he realizes that Tommy is kidding, playing at being hostile, and it’s all just a big joke. The men erupt in laughter. Suddenly a man comes and interrupts Tommy to tell him that he owes the restaurant $7,000. Abruptly, Tommy gets upset with the waiter, accusing him of embarrassing him in front of his friends and insinuating he’s a deadbeat. His anger crests and suddenly he breaks a bottle over the waiter’s head, enraged. Henry and his friends laugh at Tommy’s violent antics. “You’re a funny guy!” laughs Henry, as Tommy takes out a gun and jokingly threatens him with it. The men guffaw.
The scene shifts to the next day and we see the waiter, whose name is Sonny, with a head bandage complaining to Paulie that he’s being treated like “half a fag” by Tommy. Paulie smokes a cigar, and tells Sonny that there’s nothing he can do, but Sonny complains that Tommy has crossed a line. Henry is also there, and encourages Sonny to ask Paulie to go into business with him, by helping with the restaurant. He compares Tommy’s presence in the restaurant to putting “a silk hat on a pig.” Paulie is indignant that he doesn’t know anything about the restaurant business, but Sonny insists that all he has to do is come in and eat there to set a tone. “Look, what do you want me to do? Tommy’s a bad kid, a bad seed. What am I supposed to do, shoot him?” Paulie asks. Paulie softens and agrees to go in on the restaurant as a partner to Sonny. As Henry narrates in voiceover, we learn that this arrangement both protects Sonny and hurts him, as Sonny has to pay Paulie a cut of his earnings as the restaurant owner, regardless of how business is doing. We see a montage of Sonny’s business failing under Paulie’s crooked financial plans. When the restaurant goes out of business, Tommy and Henry light it on fire. We see them sitting in a car outside the restaurant waiting for it to go up in flames. Tommy complains about a Jewish girl he is dating, who doesn’t want to go out with an Italian man alone. Tommy invites Henry to come along on a double date with the girl’s friend. Henry is resistant, which makes Tommy mad, as the restaurant starts to burn down. Henry steps on the gas and they speed off, arguing.
The following day, we see Henry on the double date with Tommy and the two girls, complaining in voiceover that he has a meeting with Tuddy at 11, and feels bored on the date. Henry’s date encourages him to have some coffee, but he is anxious to leave to get to get to his meeting. Tommy tells him to calm down, assuring him that they’ll all leave together. In voiceover, we hear Henry’s date complaining about Henry’s behavior: “I couldn’t stand him. I thought he was really obnoxious.” Henry abruptly leaves, dragging his date along, as she complains more about his brusque behavior in voiceover. She narrates that Tommy and Diane (Tommy’s date) got Henry and her to agree to meet again on Friday night.
Analysis
The film starts with a grotesque scene of violence: a half-dead man in the trunk of a car whose aliveness is treated as a mundane annoyance rather than a cause for alarm. This sets the tone of the film as irreverent, gruesome, and aware of its own absurd violence. Less than two minutes into the film, the audience is treated to an over-the-top violent act, an already-brutalized man finished off by a cartoonish number of stabbings and a couple of gunshots for good measure. As the protagonist, Henry, closes the trunk, he tells us, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster,” as the camera zooms in on his face lit red by the lights of the car, a cold indifferent expression on his face, as a sudden flood of brassy jazz music plays. While the viewer is left shocked by the casualness of the violence, it is this casualness that governs the life of a gangster like Henry, and indeed, this is the life he always dreamed of. Dreaming of being a gangster, forced to commit horrible acts of violence such as the one so baldly depicted, is itself a comic dream. This creates an effect of throwing the viewer into the deep end, abruptly revealing the violence of the gangster’s world while then layering over that the protagonist’s deeply held desire to inhabit that world.
Henry is the narrator of the film from the start, which gives him a certain amount of authority over the events being shown, as demonstrated through his jaded voiceover narration and the ways that the camera freezes in moments of elevated violence. An aspiring tough guy, he often shrugs off events that are quite dramatic for the average viewer. As we watch the action of the film unfurl, the freeze-frame makes way for Henry’s sly narration to intrude and tell us how to watch the movie. From the moment his first voiceover line is uttered and the camera freezes on his face as he closes the trunk of the car that holds the (very) dead man, we can tell that he will be our guide, and that he will be the one to walk us through the often shocking events. Later, the screen freezes again when his father erupts into an abusive rage about his job at the cabstand. As the beating escalates, the film freezes and we see his father suspended in time, angrily holding a belt over his cowering son. To the viewer, this scene is terrifying and tragic, evidence of Henry’s horrible home life, but Henry’s voiceover narration is slyly knowing and doesn’t seem all that bothered by the abuse. Played over the image of his angry dad, we hear Henry say, “Every once in awhile, I’d have to take a beating, but by then I didn’t care. The way I saw it, everybody takes a beating sometime.” Yet again, the viewer’s perception of the terrifying events is underscored by a surprisingly casual narrator’s perspective. This occurs again when the gangsters intimidate the local postman from delivering school notices to Henry’s house. As the men threaten to put his head in the oven, the screen freezes on the postman’s horrified face as Henry narrates.
Henry outlines the central structure of the mob to the viewer within the first ten minutes, that it is primarily centered around protection. As he tells us about the system, in which a cut of all the money any of the gangsters brought in went to Paulie, the mob boss, “like in the old country,” we learn that the central purchase the gangsters were making by being gangsters in the first place was protection from other people that might hurt them, and that Paulie could offer “protection for people who can’t go to the cops.” Thus we see that the system of ethics and business being done by the tight network of gangsters is built on the basis of protection and security more than anything else. The men buy into a system that can take care of them when the law and the state cannot. In this way, the gangsters can justify their violent actions and their loyalties to the corrupt networks because they can make their own system. In Henry’s estimation, this is a simple structure—“the police department for wiseguys”—and he cannot see why mainstream society cannot understand. The dissonance between Henry’s perception of the life of a gangster and the mafia's public image is at the heart of the film; he tells us that kids carried his mother’s groceries home out of respect, but one cannot help wondering what the difference between fear and respect really is.
The structure of the film forces the viewer to empathize with how a young, impressionable boy might find himself embroiled in such a tawdry lifestyle. It starts by showing us Henry as a grown man fully caught up in the life of a gangster, before taking us back in time and showing us how he kept choosing that life every step of the way. His abusive father does little to help him make good decisions, choosing the belt over any kind of actual guidance. The fellowship offered by the mob is one that is built around protection and a certain unconventional kind of respect. For the young Henry, the group of gangsters provides a paternal guidance and appreciation that he’s lacking in his home life. When he is arrested for the first time but doesn’t give up anyone to the police, the mobsters are overwhelmingly proud of him for being so loyal. Even though he’s breaking the law, he’s doing it to admiring support from a council of older men. Furthermore, the men coerce him into staying by alleging that if he leaves his duties, he will mess up the entire operation. The life of a gangster is one which takes over Henry’s life rather quickly and does not let him go, and the viewer sees exactly how this consumes him from the start.
In Goodfellas, humor, violence, and control live side-by-side, perhaps best encapsulated by the character of Tommy, and his irreverent sense of humor. Tommy is a jokester, and he can spin a story to comic effect, making his fellow gangsters laugh heartily. His humor, however, centers around his short fuse, violent temper, and his undying loyalty to the mob. As he tells the men the story about his run-in with a cop, the punchline becomes all about how rude he was to the cop, how he told the cop, “fuck your mother,” and how he didn’t give up any information about the mob. The men guffaw heartily at the story. Indeed, Tommy has a very comic way of telling it, but his friends are also laughing at Tommy’s gall, his unfaltering swagger and confidence to speak to a cop in that way. Not only is he a jester, but he is a jester with an admirable sense of loyalty to his gangster brothers. When he toys with Henry, pretending to be offended by Henry’s insistence that he is “funny,” he is again making a display of his own power; his ability to joke is interchangeable with his ability to strike fear into the hearts of his companions. The laughs that Tommy elicits from his friends are laughs of relief, as they realize that they will not be the brunt of his wrath. As Henry realizes that Tommy is only kidding, he bursts into laughter at the fact that he was able to be so fooled (and indeed, scared). The laughter grows even more when Tommy hits a waiter over the head with a wine bottle; Tommy owes the restaurant $7,000, but he knows that the best way to gain control in the situation is to resort to violence and intimidation. His violent antics are met with hearty laughter from all of his associates.
