Last Day as a Wiseguy, from "Goodfellas" (1990), directed by Martin Scorsese

The first of three Scorsese sequences I'll present in the next little while. I know the moral anchor of "Goodfellas" kind of ... floats, but it's simply my favourite movie of all time -- the one I can't switch off when I stumble across it on TV, even if I know it's going to be butchered with commercials and maybe censored. It's kinetic, unstoppable filmmaking for one hundred and forty-six minutes, building toward this frenetic, tragicomic climax. Ray Liotta is brilliant as Henry Hill, his features pallid and anxious and sweaty, his final day as a gangster unfolding in a blur of drugs, aborted deals, family meals, and a pistol to the temple. The use of voiceover -- here and throughout the movie -- is as effective as cinema has ever achieved. Same for the melding of popular music and rhythmic, propulsive cutting (the editor is Thelma Schoonmaker, who's handled many of Scorsese's masterworks). There's a good documentary on the sequence, linked below.

Documentary: How Scorsese Creates a Frenzied Set Piece

In the next episode of The Discarded Image, I'll be looking at the "Last Day as a Wiseguy" sequence from Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. The…

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