I was doing research on Voice-Over flicks (for my own project) and watched Casino again after many, many years.
HOLY VOICE-OVER.
It's like Marty and Pileggi sat down and said "it worked in Goodfellas, lets do it again, except for 3 hours and with 3 different narrators" (Ace, Nicky and even Frank Vincent who gets two lines)
some observations:
- the first scene in the movie is like 45 minutes in. by scene I mean "traditional" scene with dialogue as opposed to montage.
- the voice-over is split between Ace and Nicky (De Niro and Pesci) and sometimes they recount moments that they wouldn't necessarily have been present for.
- there is basically ZERO PLOT. yes there's the subplot with James Woods and the diamonds and the mafia etc. etc. but overall it's a beat-by-beat movie. it's a love story, a rise and fall tragedy, it's Othello, it's a love triangle, it's a mafia movie... it's all of these things.
- there are no act breaks. the movie starts and ends pretty much "in media res". it ends super abruptly.
I can't think of another movie like it. I don't think it's entirely successful: it's insanely long and the lack of dramatic thrust actually hurts it a lot. Unlike Goodfellas, it doesn't feel like a movie written to sound real: rather, it sounds like a bunch of anecdotes and details strung together. not sure if that makes sense.
but of course it being Scorsese the filmmaking is impeccable, the scenes are stunning and the whole thing is juicy as heck.
just a really, really weird screenplay. thoughts?!?
HOLY VOICE-OVER.
It's like Marty and Pileggi sat down and said "it worked in Goodfellas, lets do it again, except for 3 hours and with 3 different narrators" (Ace, Nicky and even Frank Vincent who gets two lines)
some observations:
- the first scene in the movie is like 45 minutes in. by scene I mean "traditional" scene with dialogue as opposed to montage.
- the voice-over is split between Ace and Nicky (De Niro and Pesci) and sometimes they recount moments that they wouldn't necessarily have been present for.
- there is basically ZERO PLOT. yes there's the subplot with James Woods and the diamonds and the mafia etc. etc. but overall it's a beat-by-beat movie. it's a love story, a rise and fall tragedy, it's Othello, it's a love triangle, it's a mafia movie... it's all of these things.
- there are no act breaks. the movie starts and ends pretty much "in media res". it ends super abruptly.
I can't think of another movie like it. I don't think it's entirely successful: it's insanely long and the lack of dramatic thrust actually hurts it a lot. Unlike Goodfellas, it doesn't feel like a movie written to sound real: rather, it sounds like a bunch of anecdotes and details strung together. not sure if that makes sense.
but of course it being Scorsese the filmmaking is impeccable, the scenes are stunning and the whole thing is juicy as heck.
just a really, really weird screenplay. thoughts?!?
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