Martin Scorsese names two movies that inspired ‘Goodfellas’
There’s no doubt that, among the greatest modern filmmakers, the American movie maestro Martin Scorsese is one of the most knowledgeable of the bunch, rubbing shoulders only with the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola. Having been making movies since the late 1960s, Scorsese has developed quite the mind for the craft of cinema, earmarking Ingmar Bergman and Stanley Kubrick as two of his favourite filmmakers.
By opening his very own Letterboxd profile, Scorsese has allowed public access to his cinematic tastes, showing off recent movies he’s seen and loved. Among such remarkable insights is his list of companion films, where he has collated each and every one of his movies and paired them with another to create a dream billing of flicks that each share a common interest, style or theme.
“I love the idea of putting different films together into one program,” he writes, “I grew up seeing double features, programs in repertory houses, evenings of avant-garde films in storefront theatres. You always learn something, see something in a new light, because every movie is in conversation with every other movie. The greater the difference between the pictures, the better.”
Such explains why the first of two movies that Scorsese paired with his 1990 crime classic Goodfellas, starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta, is the 1960 comedy caper Ocean’s Eleven from 1960. Famously remade in 2001, the original is a star-studded flick that tells the story of a group of daring friends who attempt to pull off a heist in Las Vegas, starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.
Speaking about the movie and how it influenced Goodfellas, Scorsese explained: “The feeling of Ocean’s Eleven, the casual ease and relaxation of the Rat Pack—that was what I remembered in a lot of the people involved in the ‘criminal element’ when I was growing up, it’s what I felt in Nick Pileggi’s book Wise Guy, it’s what we wanted in the picture.”
Elsewhere, another one of Scorsese’s most significant influences for Goodfellas comes from a more predictable source: the films of French director François Truffaut. Specifically, Scorsese was concerned with the 1962 film Jules and Jim, a classic of the French New Wave that tells the story of a love triangle between two close friends and an alluring woman.
Influenced specifically by the film’s pace and style, Scorsese states: “I wanted GoodFellas to surge across the screen, coming at the audience from all sides, just as Truffaut did in Jules and Jim, especially in its opening section.”
Take a look back at Goodfellas’ influences by watching the trailer for the original Ocean’s Eleven below.
Movies that inspired Goodfellas:
- Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962)
- Ocean’s Eleven (Lewis Milestone, 1960)
