Martin Scorsese has directed so many near-perfect cinematic masterpieces that there’s no clear winner for the title of his best movie. In fact, he’s turned out so many incredible films that it’s hard to even narrow down a shortlist: Raging Bull, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, not to mention underrated gems like The King of Comedy.
But arguably the iconic filmmaker’s most influential work is 1990’s Goodfellas, his biopic of Henry Hill that is arguably the quintessential cinematic portrait of mafia life. Scorsese influenced a ton of movies with Goodfellas, but he was also influenced by plenty of existing films while he was making it.
10 Influenced It: Jules And Jim
When the story of Henry Hill first came across Scorsese’s desk and he was envisioning how to turn it into a movie, his model for the film’s unique style was the opening moments of François Truffaut’s French New Wave romance Jules and Jim.
The first few minutes of the movie have a rapid pace, cutting all over the place with freeze frames and voiceover narration. Scorsese wanted to capture the energy from the opening of Jules and Jim and sustain it for the entirety of Goodfellas.
9 Influenced By It: War Dogs
It seems that a few years ago, Todd Phillips became disillusioned with being one of Hollywood’s most popular comedy directors and became bent on becoming Martin Scorsese. Before helming Joker as a derivative knockoff of Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy (with a little Raging Bull thrown in), Phillips directed Jonah Hill and Miles Teller in War Dogs, a true-to-life thriller about arms dealers.
With kinetic cross-cutting and a soundtrack filled with hits by such artists as Iggy Pop and Dean Martin, War Dogs wants desperately to be Goodfellas.
8 Influenced It: The Great Train Robbery
In the final shot of Goodfellas, as Henry Hill comes out of his witness-protection suburban home to pick up the paper and looks out past the camera, we see Tommy firing a gun against a black background.
In addition to realizing Henry’s worst fears, that he’ll spend his life looking over his shoulder for a mob hitman, the shot is a direct reference to The Great Train Robbery.
7 Influenced By It: Lord Of War
Written and directed by Andrew Niccol, Lord of War tells the Goodfellas-style rise and fall of an arms dealer played by Nicolas Cage. It opens with a breathtaking shot following a bullet from a factory to a cargo ship to a gun to a child soldier’s head.
The movie received an official endorsement from Amnesty International for highlighting the very real issue of international arms trafficking.
6 Influenced It: Red River
According to Martin Scorsese, the scene in Goodfellas in which Henry pistol-whips the guy who groped Karen was influenced by John Wayne’s final confrontation in Howard Hawks’ 1948 western Red River, particularly the shot of Henry approaching the guy with the gun in his hand.
At the end of Red River, Wayne and his posse confront Montgomery Clift. The two get into a fist fight, which is broken up by Joanne Dru, who gets them to make peace (the making peace part was left out of Goodfellas).
5 Influenced By It: American Hustle
With long takes, voiceover narration, and a soundtrack full of pop hits, David O. Russell couldn’t have made the influence of Goodfellas more transparent in American Hustle, his darkly comic dramatization of the FBI’s Abscam sting operation.
Russell’s movie is entertaining enough, but his sprawling crime saga is far less focused and streamlined than Scorsese’s.
4 Influenced It: The Untouchables
One of the most memorable moments in Goodfellas is the long tracking shot through the Copacabana, which visualizes Karen getting seduced by Henry’s mafioso lifestyle. The shot took seven takes to get right; one of the takes was screwed up by comedian Henny Youngman forgetting his lines.
According to Illeana Douglas, who played Rosie in the movie, the Copa shot was inspired by a similar Steadicam shot in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables, which was released three years earlier.
3 Influenced By It: American Made
Tom Cruise reteamed with Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman for this biopic of Barry Seal, a pilot who managed to work for the CIA and the Medellin cartel simultaneously.
Much like Goodfellas, the cinematography and editing of American Made sometimes play like a documentary, despite being a fictionalized dramatization of true events.
2 Influenced It: The Musketeers Of Pig Alley
D.W. Griffith’s short crime film The Musketeers of Pig Alley is widely regarded to be the first American gangster movie ever made. It’s notable for its technical breakthroughs in developing follow focus.
The filmmaking techniques in the movie have heavily influenced every gangster movie that Martin Scorsese has ever directed, particularly Goodfellas and Gangs of New York.
1 Influenced By It: Boogie Nights
While Paul Thomas Anderson was shooting Boogie Nights, he reportedly watched Goodfellas every weekend. The two movies have nothing in common in terms of story, as Goodfellas revolves around organized crime and Boogie Nights revolves around the adult film industry.
But Anderson wanted his film to have the combination of epic scale and brisk pacing that Scorsese’s movie nailed.
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