The opening scene of Goodfellas works to quickly set the tone of the entire film to the audience and gives us a taste of what to expect from it. Goodfellas is not as easy to define as most films, as it does not keep to just one genre. This film includes genre conventions of crime fiction, thriller, drama and biographical film (as it is based on the real life events surrounding the Lucchese crime family between 1955 and 1980). The opening shot acts as an establishing shot, tracking a car on its journey down the road at night. The darkness of the scene suggests suspicious activities to the audience. After setting the scene as taking place in New York in 1970, the next shot continues inside the car.
There are 3 characters in the car. Here the primary focus is on the driver who takes most of the space up on the shot. This signals to the audience that this character is of the greatest important to us and the storyline, and it is he who we then focus our attention on. This shot lasts for 24 seconds, and deals with the characters reactions to a thumping noise they hear whilst driving. The costumes of the characters show us they are relatively wealthy or operate in the business world, as they are wearing suits. This also reinforces the time the scene is set in to the audience, with the hair styles and costumes clearly belonging to the past. After speculating on whether the driver hit something or picked up a flat tire, they come to a conclusion that is not yet revealed to the audience and decide to pull over.
The next shot is a mid-shot of the characters approaching the boot of the car. They seem hesitant to open it up as the thumping continues, with one character pulling a large knife out of his inside jacket as they do so. This is the moment the audience realises these are not ordinary men, and perhaps live a violent, criminal life. These suspicions are confirmed when the boot is open to reveal a bloodied man with his head sticking out of a body bag. The man with the knife does not hesitate in violently stabbing the man repeatedly after showing annoyance at the man still being alive.
This not only shows the audience the violence these men impose, but also shows they must be experienced in murder and other criminal activities as they looked calm and controlled on the car journey in the 2nd shot of the scene even though they knew they had a dead (or almost dead) body in the boot. After the repeated stabbing of the man, another of the characters pulls out a gun and shoots the man 4 times to ensure he is dead. This suggests a certain air of professionalism in what they do despite it being shady criminal activities.
The final shot of the scene starts off as a mid-shot of the driver before zooming in to a close-up shot. A narrator says "as far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster." This dialogue suggests the "gangsters" of the shot enjoy what they do. This gives us a lot of information on these characters very early on in the film. Clearly they have no morals or fear of the law and are more than likely quite impulsive, unpredictable characters as they must be slightly crazy to treat murder so lightly.We can assume this is the driver speaking as the shot remains still on his face for a long period of time whilst the narrator talks and the opening music kicks in. The music that begins seems to treat the darkness of the scene with a feeling of levity.
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