Goodfellas opening analysis.

The opening scene of Goodfellas works to quickly set the tone of the entire film to the audience and gives us some expectations of the film. 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 sets the mood of suspicious activities so this gets the audience thinking about what the characters may have been doing.  After setting the scene as taking place in New York in 1970, the next shot is 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 great importance to us and the storyline, and this makes the audience focus on him. This is a short shot, 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 and criminal life. These suspicions are confirmed when the boot is opened to reveal a bloodied man tied up with half of his body in a bag. The man with the knife doesn’t hesitate in violently stabbing the man repeatedly after showing annoyance at the man still being alive. This shows the audience the violence these men may impose, but also shows they must be experienced in criminal activities as they were calm and controlled on the car journey even though they thought they had a dead body in the boot. After the repeated stabbing another one of the characters pulls out a gun and shoots the man 4 times to ensure his death. This suggests a certain air of professionalism in what they do.

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. Clearly they have no morals or fear of the law and are more than likely impulsive, unpredictable characters as they must be slightly crazy to treat such a bad crime 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.