RANKING THE PEOPLE IN THE CHRISTMAS SCENE IN GOODFELLAS

The Christmas scene in Goodfellas adds to the timeless charm of the movie.

It’s easy to know what to focus on in the Goodfellas Christmas scene, as Robert De Niro’s Jimmy Conway is bursting with gleeful charm at the sight of Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill. There’s many times during the 1990 classic where Jimmy is annoyed, frustrating, full of rage, but he’s never more merry than he is when Hill walks into the bar in that scene. Goodfellas is not a Christmas movie, it’s a movie that spans someone’s entire life, but the Christmas scene in Goodfellas is might be my single favorite Christmas scene in cinematic history. With about half-way through the movie, you can feel the wheels turning, and although the gang has just completed what is supposed to be a score for a lifetime, there’s an obvious anxiety still permeating through the scene. Henry Hill talks about how the Luftanza heist was supposed to be the score for a lifetime, but it wasn’t, because when you do crime, there’s always loose ends and backstabbers that hold your comfort captive. The anxiety of crime — and all the hoops you must go through to stay a free man in spite of it — renders the crime itself moot. That’s what Goodfellas is all about — the chaos of human emotion, decision-making, and how the entire status of your financial security or strictly, your security as a person in the world can change in a New York minute.

So, it is wondrous to see De Niro capture those emotions so well. There’s obviously been a ton of great De Niro roles, so it is almost futile to discuss what his best performance is, but I’ve always been attached to his acting in Goodfellas, one of the best, if not the best, supporting roles in the Scorsese canon. Jimmy Conway is a man who turns the movie on its axis, despite the livewire charisma of Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito and Ray Liotta’s sleekness, every major tide in Goodfellas is turned by De Niro embodying many emotions at once: the greed of the mob, the rage, the efficiency, and lastly, the scary anxiety. (He does some of his best work in the phone scene when the old gangsters tell him that Tommy was executed when he thought he was going to become a made man. De Niro is incensed, begins to cry, and throws the phone booth down like the Hulk would because it means their entire dream is dying. All there is now is him and Henry, two outsiders that will always be middlemen). Jimmy is so tightly wounded — struggling with his lack of trust in everyone around him, including and epsecially Morrie, the token Jewish wig store owner, that it feels startling that he is happy to see Henry. When he yells at Johnny and Carbone for buying gifts for their wives and for themselves — he’s yelling at them in long-winded run-on sentences — his gut instincts about the group of jokers he did this heist with are proven right. They’re not to be trusted; there is no crime family, just people who are a means to an end. Indeed, Jimmy Conway’s Christmas spirit doesn’t last long after this.

A humorous thing about the scene is how it makes characters out of supporting roles, from people that would have faded into the background if not for Scorsese’s trademark attention to detail. So, for the Substack, I am counting down a list of my favorite things going on in the Christmas scene.

7. Karen Hill (Lorraine Bracco)

Karen’s in the background in this scene, but there’s a great look she gives Jimmy when Jimmy is screaming about how much of a “GENIUS!” that Henry is. Karen is essentially a spoiled girl, who gets sucked into this life of crime by the charming and avaricious Henry. All of those stories you hear about women meeting dangerous men who lead them to a life of chaos and crime, that’s actually who Karen is. So, when Jimmy is yelling “genius!”, she has a moment of like: “Is he?” It’s the true archetype of Karen, who is always played with conflicting thoughts by Lorraine Bracco.

6. Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci)

Tommy is also in the background in this — I tend to believe that Tommy is the fourth, perhaps fifth, most important character in this great film, an example of the richness of the text in Goodfellas. However, Pesci’s obviously sensational as Tommy, the borderline psychopath who befriends Henry as a teengaer. He’s the representative of the mafia’s absurdity, because any regular citizen would never want to befriend this apparent maniac. In this scene, he is telling his girlfriend: “I’m going to see Stacks, don’t you talk to anyone, look straight ahead or I’ll fucking kill you!”, with a devilish smile at the end. His girlfriend is laughing and playfully tells Jimmy’s wife that Tommy is so jealous, but based on Tommy’s actions in the movie, we aren’t laughing.

5. Stacks (Samuel L. Jackson)

In a great but minor Sam Jackson role, Stacks is the token Black man who is allowed to join the mobsters in the heist. Stacks is with a honey, and he’s saying “this drink is better than, sex, babe!” in a burgundy blazer. A minor detail is that Stacks loves women, and when he is murdered by his friend Tommy, he talks about how Stacks “always seems to have a bitch in here.” I wonder if Stacks and Tommy ever chased women together, and how well both of them did while doing so. Stacks is almost surely every white character’s one Black friend, a dangerous position to be in, and soon, we learn that’s somewhat his downfall.

4. Carbone and his wife (Frank Sivero)

Jimmy gives an earful to Carbone, who is buying an expensive white mink for his wife. Carbone tells his wife in Italian, to shut up and leave. Goodfellas never fails to remind you that it is a movie for the boys. (Some of Goodfellas most strident fans are women, though).

3. Morrie

What a wonder Morrie is: He seems Jimmy yelling at everyone, and still has enough worry in his mind about what he is owed. He’s an anxious Jewish man in the midst of these gangsters, and he doesn’t quite know how in danger he is always in. He’s pestering Jimmy, because he does deserve the money because it was his scheme to begin with, but Jimmy does not view him as a serious person (after all, he owns a wig store). Later, Jimmy kills Morrie, partly because Morrie wouldn’t stop talking about what he was owed. This is a stereotypical Jewish character: anxious, charming, and empathetic. Played with perfection by Chuck Low, Morrie’s wig only came off when he is being murdered for being annoying.

2. Johnny Roastbeef (Johnny “Roastbeef” Williams)

Perhaps Johnny Roastbeef thought that Jimmy would like the new car he bought (it was under his mother’s name!). Perhaps he was just buying something for his wife, but his disappointment when Jimmy is not enthused is exceptional acting. Goodfellas is impeccably acted, from Ray Liotta to Johnny “Roastbeef” Williams. As his wife is confused by Jimmy’s indignation at Johnny’s spending, Johnny is being rebuked fiercely. He was only trying to impress his new bride with his heist money. Jimmy can’t have that. “Jimmy, it’s under my mother’s name”, (I love how Johnny thinks this makes it better), and Jimmy is not having any of it. It’s the best De Niro is all movie: he’s in complete control of the scene, and your waiting for him to snap. He never completely does. Poor Johnny: his spending is part of what makes Goodfellas the movie that it is. It never stops being funny, scary, and honest about human nature all in one.

1. Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro)

Much is spoken about De Niro throughout his career, but he’s never been more of a movie star than he is here. It’s the wild swings of his arms when he grabs the jacket —- and the taking off of Carbone’s wife —- that does the trick; it’s the “what’s the matter with you?”; it’s the happiness he has when Henry first comes in; it’s the “don’t do anything stupid with the money” quote to Henry, who of course, does not listen to Jimmy. This Christmas, I want everyone to understand why this is De Niro’s best performance. He’s never been mighty, cooler, or more unnerving.