GoodFellas - 1990

Good Fellas Poster
24 in. x 36 in.

Buy at AllPosters.com
Framed   Mounted


GoodFellas (1990) is director Martin Scorsese's stylistic masterpiece - a follow-up film to his own Mean Streets (1973), released in the year of Francis Ford Coppola's third installment of his gangster epic - The Godfather, Part III (1990). It is a nitty-gritty, unflinching treatment of a true mobster story about three violent "wiseguys" [Mafia slang for 'gangsters'], enhanced by the Italian-American director's own experience of his upbringing in Little Italy.

The film's factual, semi-documentary account was adapted from both Nicholas Pileggi's and Martin Scorsese's screenplay - based upon Pileggi's 1985 non-fictional book Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. Film posters were subtitled: "Three Decades of Life in the Mafia." The real-life story concerned a low-level, marginalized gangster (or 'foot-soldier') of mixed ethnic roots (half-Irish, half-Sicilian) - Henry Hill, who ultimately broke the gangster's code of 'never ratting on your friends', and turned informant for the FBI and entered the Federal Witness Protection Program to save his life by disappearing from view.

The fast-moving, energizing, episodic story, with plentiful profanity (the F-word is repeatedly spoken by Joe Pesci's character), forceful editorial cuts and visuals, shifting points of view, and characters speaking directly to the camera, is told with voice-over narrative commentary by Henry Hill (Ray Liotta). It includes about thirty years in his life, from his teen years as a Brooklyn Irish neighborhood kid to maturity as an adult gangster, covering the years from the 1950s to the drug-saturated 1970s when married to wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco). The additional voice-over of his wife's point-of-view provides even further insight into the all-encompassing culture and lure of life within the 'family.' Freeze frames sprinkled through the film accentuate the indelible, impressionable moments in Henry's experiences.

Cool Hand Luke - 1967

Cool Hand Luke Framed Art Print
16 in. x 22 in.

Buy at AllPosters.com


Based on Donn Pearce's novel and one of the great prison-chain-gang films. A spirited, irreverent, social misfit Luke (Newman) is arrested for destroying parking meters and imprisoned in a tough Southern prison farm, commanded by a sadistic, prison officer Captain (Martin). After boxing with the chain-gang boss Dragline (Kennedy), he eventually becomes a hero to his fellow inmates, earning the title "Cool Hand Luke" because his will cannot be broken. A visit by Luke's dying mother (Van Fleet) reveals facts about his past. The stubborn, unruly and independent rebel refuses to submit and continually and cooly defies the authorities with repeated escape attempts. As the inmates start worshipping him as a folk hero, he risks everything in order to live up to their expectations, and is sacrificed in the tragic climax. With the memorable line of dialogue: "What we have here is failure to communicate," and the classic egg-eating scene.

Bonnie and Clyde - 1967

Bonnie and Clyde, Faye Dunaway, Warren Beatty, 1967 Giclee Print
9 in. x 12 in.
Buy at AllPosters.com
Mounted



Bonnie and Clyde (1967) is one of the sixties' most talked about, comedy volatile, controversial crime / gangster movies combined, terror, love and ferocious violence. It was produced by Warner Bros. - the studio responsible for the gangster films in the 1930s, and it seems appropriate that this innovation, the film romanticized revisionist and redefined the gangster genre crime / and the portrayal of violence in screen forever.

Its producer, 28, Warren Beatty, was also his role as star Clyde Barrow and his co-star Bonnie Parker, a newcomer Faye Dunaway became an actress because of her major breakthrough in this influential film. Similarly, unknown Gene Hackman has been recognized as a solid actor and then to play many important roles (his major role was in the French Connection (1971)).

The story of rise and fall of self-harm as Clyde gangster anti-authoritarian criminal is well documented. Both figures illustrate the tragic outlaw "innocent people on the go" who cling to each other and try to operate as a family. The film, with many conflicting moods and changes in tone (serious humor), is a cross between a gangster film, traditions and tragic romance, a road movie and the movie with friends, and screwball comedy . It illustrates several features of experimental film-making of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague) movement. [Originally the film was being directed by Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, who withdrew and made Fahrenheit 451 (1966) instead.] Displays the main movie on the infamous couple romanticized violence and proclaimed: "They are young ... they are in love ... and they kill people."