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Post by Deleted on Sept 30, 2020 19:03:25 GMT
The Godfather was laughed out of it though by real wise guys i think i remember reading, whereas Goodfellas was more like "yeah, 90% true". They're set in very different eras with different values. The Godfather is about assimilation,aspiration, living The American Dream. They see themselves as corporate businessmen. With Goodfellas things are more individualistic and cynical; their attitude is more " Fuck straight society, they're suckers anyway, grab everything you can.."
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Post by Deleted on Sept 30, 2020 19:12:11 GMT
The Godfather was laughed out of it though by real wise guys i think i remember reading, whereas Goodfellas was more like "yeah, 90% true". They're set in very different eras with different values. The Godfather is about assimilation,aspiration, living The American Dream. They see themselves as corporate businessmen. With Goodfellas things are more individualistic and cynical; their attitude is more " Fuck straight society, they're suckers anyway, grab everything you can.." Still remember reading or hear in a doc that the real gangster were laughing at it.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 30, 2020 19:19:42 GMT
I don't know...perhaps they were looking at an era before their time.
I do think Vito Corleone is romanticised to a certain degree, in reality the gangsters of that era, such as Albert Anastasia, were every bit as brutal and amoral as the Mafia of the 60s and 70s.
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Sneelock
god
there's a difference, you know...
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Post by Sneelock on Sept 30, 2020 19:39:38 GMT
it's like a Visconti movie. Vito is a thug and a monster but not when compared to newer thugs and monsters. he had an honor system - such as it was. I think the Godfather movies are about "honor among thieves" and, of course about family.
GoodFellas is about guys who grew up in the streets doing favors for the guys in power and how that power ultimately fucks them and doesn't give a shit about them. Paulie is not the real power - it doesn't matter how much he loves you. when you're fucked - you're fucked.
Vito doesn't want Michael to be a thug and a monster but he ends up perhaps the biggest in the movie.
I think both films are good and rich but they are looking at it from different angles. Michael ultimately moves beyond Vito's world of "honor among thieves" - the guys in GoodFellas never lived in that world to begin with.
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Post by tory on Oct 1, 2020 8:53:48 GMT
There's a highly orchestrated feel to The Godfather that has never really appealed to me. It is a piece of cinema, no doubt, but everything is choreographed to perfection and ends up being slightly unreal. Perhaps that's the appeal of it.
Goodfellas just felt like interactions between real criminals, who in the main, are violent psychopaths who don't give a fuck about anyone.
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Post by Reactionary Rage on Oct 1, 2020 9:48:39 GMT
it's like a Visconti movie. Vito is a thug and a monster but not when compared to newer thugs and monsters. he had an honor system - such as it was. I think the Godfather movies are about "honor among thieves" and, of course about family. GoodFellas is about guys who grew up in the streets doing favors for the guys in power and how that power ultimately fucks them and doesn't give a shit about them. Paulie is not the real power - it doesn't matter how much he loves you. when you're fucked - you're fucked. Vito doesn't want Michael to be a thug and a monster but he ends up perhaps the biggest in the movie. I think both films are good and rich but they are looking at it from different angles. Michael ultimately moves beyond Vito's world of "honor among thieves" - the guys in GoodFellas never lived in that world to begin with. "A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man"And of course Michael doesn't. Romanticised? Well, the 1970s sepia beauty of The Godfather can't help but give it a certain visual elegance and sophistication (there's a strong elegiac quality) but, you're right, even men like Vito have a code, a old world civility and along the way something is lost when Michael takes control. In the Sopranos you get a sense of the moral code being warped over time. Tony bemoans a perceived decline a lot in that show and I think that's a very human thing. Rose tinted nostalgia? Perhaps but a lot of us feel that things are generally speaking more coarse in our culture and have worsened over time. I'm sure gangsters feel that too. Vito is old world, Michael is new world. I think Michael's descent is, on one level, about the corruption of the old by the new. Michael is American whereas Vito is very much still Sicilian.
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