Welkom op Fragmenten uit het Schemerland, mijn persoonlijke website en content-verzameling. Je vindt hier veel artikelen over films en series in de FilmDungeon. Ook vind je op deze site mijn achtergrondverhaal, een selectie van mijn professionele werk, en een groeiende collectie blogs – fragmenten genaamd – over uiteenlopende onderwerpen. Veel leesplezier en bedankt voor het bezoeken van mijn blog!
— Jeppe Kleijngeld
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Director: Francis Ford Coppola Writers: Francis Ford Coppola (screenplay), Mario Puzo (screenplay & novel) Stars: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall
With The Godfather: Part II, director Francis Ford Coppola did the impossible. He created a movie that is just as captivating and beautiful as its unforgettable predecessor.
Unique in its structure, both sequel and prequel simultaneously, Part II sees the rise of a young Vito Corleone (Robert De Niro) to power and Michael Corleone’s (Al Pacino) transcendence to hell: an inevitable continuation of the events of the first part.
Michael becomes a truly tragic character by the end when he dooms himself by committing an unspeakable act of evil. The build-up to the shattering final image – Michael sitting alone outside his Lake Tahoe estate having lost his family – is one of the most memorable images in cinema history. A unique accomplishment by Coppola and his team.
Special praise must go to Pacino for radiating Michael’s mindset throughout every step of his diabolical transformation, making Michael Corleone one of the most iconic figures in movie history.
And cinematographer Gordon Willis succeeds once again in making every image a wonderful painting. As far as cinematic accomplishments go, Part II is as epic as its subject matter.
Director: Quentin Tarantino Writers: Quentin Tarantino (stories), Roger Avary (stories), Quentin Tarantino (screenplay) Stars: John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis
In 1994, a film was released at the Cannes Film Festival that shook the foundations of the industry. Here was a talented 31-year old director who really seemed to understand the language of cinema like no other.
This director was named Quentin Tarantino, and he had debuted two years earlier with the sensational heist movie Reservoir Dogs. That film got excellent reviews, but not a wide release. His second movie made Tarantino a household name.
Although he has made a number of terrific genre movies since, his take on the gangster genre remains his greatest work.
Pulp Fiction famously weaves together four crime stories in L.A. in a tapestry of humor, violence, pop culture references and mystery. Famous for its nonlinear storytelling, Pulp Fiction is a grand exercise in style that is as inimitable as it is brilliant.
It won the award for Best Film at the Cannes Film Festival and later the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (shared by Tarantino with his friend Roger Avery who contributed the story The Gold Watch to the script).
In 2013, Pulp Fiction was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as ‘culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant’. It is without a doubt one of the most original and influential gangster movies of all time.
This remake of Howard Hawks 1932 gangster classic – which starred Paul Muni as gangster Tony Camonte – became a legendary movie within the genre.
Screenplay writer Oliver Stone changed the setting from Chicago in the early thirties to Miami in the early eighties, when it was flooded with (criminal) Cuban refugees. One of these is Tony Montana, a hoodlum with huge ambitions and an equally great temper.
After portraying Michael Corleone two times in 1972 and 1974, Al Pacino added another iconic gangster to pop culture folklore with his performance of the volatile Tony Montana.
The movie may at times be over the top, Pacino is 100% believable in his outrageous performance. As opposed to Michael Corleone, who was silently menacing and always had a serious composure, Tony Montana is much more loud, engaging and openly aggressive. Different personalities, but equally cunning and altogether deadly.
Together with his friend Manny, Tony rises in the Florida underworld after performing a few bloody jobs for local cocaine big shot Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia). Very soon, he dresses in silk suits and drives expensive (and butt-ugly) sports cars, but it isn’t enough. He wants the world, Chico, and everything in it.
With its infamous chainsaw sequence and ‘Rambo’ style ending, Scarface raised the bar in the level of violence acceptable within the gangster genre. The ending is never topped in how extreme, bloody and bat shit insane it is.
Many movies on this list are ‘rise and fall’ stories. In that category, Scarface is the top achiever hands down: no high in the genre was ever higher, and now low was ever lower.
Scarface is thus the ultimate rise and fall gangster story and with that, it is one of the greatest gangster movies ever made.
Imagine that you are living in the nineties and GoodFellas is your favorite movie of all time. Then its director Martin Scorsese announces a follow-up with much of the same cast and crew. This lucky occurrence happened to me.
Of course, Casino could have been a disappointment or a mere repetition of GoodFellas, but it became another mob masterpiece by the master of the genre (although he maintains Casino is not a mob movie). I fell in love with Casino in the cinema back then and now, thirty years later, I am falling in love with it all over again. I’m enjoying it even more than I ever thought possible.
Like in GoodFellas, the first hour provides a documentary style insider perspective on the mob’s Las Vegas in the seventies. The voice-overs are provided by Sam ‘Ace’ Rothstein (De Niro), a professional gambler who ran the Tangiers casino for the Chicago outfit, and Nicky Santoro (Pesci), a mafia enforcer who is sent after him to watch his back. Street guys running an operation of this magnitude? It is easy to see why Marty wanted to tell this story. He loves criminal conspiracies and this is a major one.
Things go smooth for a while, but as the tagline says: ‘no one can stay at the top forever’. Rothstein, the most controlled guy on the planet, falls in love with the highly volatile showgirl Ginger McKenna and marries her. That is one gamble that will cost him dearly. Their rocky marriage is the first thing that gets out of control.
The second explosive element in the mix is Nicky, who starts his own gang in Vegas and then starts pillaging the place as if it’s the Wild West. Finally, there is also the dumbest gangster in the mob’s history – Artie Piscano – who keeps financial records of the entire operation. At the end, ten years after Rothstein moved to Vegas, the whole house of cards starts collapsing in on itself.
The casting alone makes this one of the greatest mob movies ever. De Niro, Stone and Pesci couldn’t be more perfect (one made mafia member said Pesci’s performance is the most realistic portrayal of a wise guy ever), but all the supporting characters are golden as well. I mean, where did they find all these old mob guys in the grocery store? They are just fantastic.
Add to that the incredible cinematography, editing, production design, music, the beautiful credit sequence by Saul Bass, and the most realistic and gruesome mob violence ever put on screen, I mean Scorsese really aced it once again.
Welkom op Fragmenten uit het Schemerland, mijn persoonlijke website en content-verzameling. Je vindt hier veel artikelen over films en series in de FilmDungeon. Ook vind je op deze site mijn achtergrondverhaal, een selectie van mijn professionele werk, en een groeiende collectie blogs – fragmenten genaamd – over uiteenlopende onderwerpen. Veel leesplezier en bedankt voor het bezoeken van mijn blog!
