Martin Scorsese has made a bunch of critically acclaimed masterpieces throughout his decades-long career, but arguably his most influential and masterfully crafted film is 1990’s Goodfellas. It plays like a mobster’s home movie, but also utilizes everything in the cinematic playbook from montage to cross-cutting to voiceover narration.
While it’s a wildly original movie, Goodfellas was influenced by a few key cinema classics. According to IndieWire, the movie’s rapid pacing grew from Scorsese’s desire to recreate the kinetic energy of the opening montage of the French New Wave classic Jules et Jim in a feature-length movie. Goodfellas is filled with Easter eggs and references to a wide range of classic movies, from a ‘40s western to a ‘60s slasher.
Psycho (1960)
After Henry Hill’s voiceover says, “As far back as I can , I always wanted to be a gangster,” Goodfellas’ nonlinear structure takes the audience back to his childhood in New York, where he saw mobsters absorbing cash and respect up and down his block.
The closeup of Henry watching the gangsters hanging out on his street mirrors Norman Bates spying on Marion Crane through the wall of her motel room in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 thriller masterpiece Psycho. Scorsese’s use of the shot from Psycho compares Henry’s iration of the gangsters’ lifestyle to Norman’s voyeurism.
The Oklahoma Kid (1939)
In addition to the James Cagney classic playing on the TV in one scene, Goodfellas references The Oklahoma Kid in one of its most disturbing sequences. Tommy homages the movie with his handgun when he shoots at Spider’s feet to force him to dance.
Jokingly referencing an old western while threatening someone’s life highlights Tommy’s sociopathic attitude toward violence. Even after he accidentally shoots Spider in the foot, he doesn’t care.
I Vitelloni (1953)
Henry Hill introducing the audience to the “goodfellas” and the camera swooping around the characters is shot very similarly to Fausto introducing his friends – the titular “vitelloni” – in the opening scene of Federico Fellini’s coming-of-age gem I Vitelloni.
While it’s not as widely celebrated as some of Fellini’s other films, like La Dolce Vita and 8½, I Vitelloni is an insightful study of male friendship and the choice that every young adult has to make between settling down with a family and exploring the world alone.
The Shining (1980)
When Henry Hill is in the shower and hears about his score from the Lufthansa heist on the radio, he pounds the wall with excitement. Scorsese frames him from below in a shot that mirrors Stanley Kubrick’s shot of Jack Torrance trapped in the pantry in his 1980 horror opus The Shining.
There are some surprising parallels between Henry Hill and Jack Torrance. Much like Jack, Henry is a husband and father with a serious temper problem and no patience at all for his wife and children. He doesn’t attack them with an axe, but he does hold a gun to his wife’s head (albeit after she held one to his).
Shane (1953)
When Tommy is shooting at Spider’s feet and he can’t what movie his sadistic reference is from, he asks the other mobsters at the card table if they . Before one of them correctly identifies it as The Oklahoma Kid, Jimmy jokingly suggests Shane.
Shane is a very different movie than The Oklahoma Kid. While The Oklahoma Kid is a goofy, gimmicky movie with a 47% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Shane is one of the most critically adored masterpieces of the western genre, a cerebral meditation on the myths of gunfighters. Alan Ladd stars as a grizzled gunslinger trying and failing to outrun his violent past.
Vertigo (1958)
Psycho isn’t the only Hitchcock classic that Scorsese referenced in Goodfellas. He also includes a nod to the most iconic shot from the master of suspense’s 1958 noir masterpiece Vertigo. Vertigo, among other things, is noted for popularizing dolly zooms, so much so that it’s often called the “Vertigo shot.” It creates a disorienting effect as the whole frame appears to be moving, but the subject remains the same size.
Hitchcock uses the dolly zoom whenever Scottie is up at a great height to show his acrophobia kicking in. In Goodfellas, Scorsese uses it when Jimmy and Henry are meeting at a diner to show that the law is closing in and their days are numbered.
The Great Train Robbery (1903)
At the end of Goodfellas, after Henry has ratted out all his friends to avoid jail time, he comes out to the front step of his suburban witness protection house to pick up the paper. Right before Sid Vicious’ rendition of “My Way” blares onto the Goodfellas soundtrack, Henry stares out into the distance and Scorsese cuts to Tommy shooting a pistol at the camera against a black background.
The shot is a direct reference to Edwin Porter’s seminal silent western short The Great Train Robbery. Scorsese uses this shot to imply that Henry’s inevitable fate – and that of anyone who gets mixed up in organized crime – is to spend their lives looking over their shoulder, waiting to be killed.
Red River (1948)
Karen first starts to fall for Henry when she tells him about a neighbor who tried to sexually assault her and Henry walks right up to the guy in his driveway and mercilessly pistol-whips him.
The shot of Henry walking up the driveway to confront the guy, gun in hand, is a nod to John Wayne’s confrontation with Montgomery Clift at the climax of Howard Hawks’ 1948 classic western Red River. In both Goodfellas and Red River, the hero’s violent actions are motivated by love.
