From this essay I hope to establish weather ?Goodfellas? conforms to the classical generic conventions of the gangster films of the 1930s or is it in a complete different league of it own? As it goes the Goodfellas conventions are closely related to ?Public Enemy? and ?Little Caesar? as it shows the lead characters rise to the gangster life and fall as such. Goodfellas differs slightly but still stays in the boundaries of this common identity given to the gangster genre. As the classical gangster films set up the narrative for this genre, Goodfellas doesn?t drift far from this narrative set in the 1930s.Goodfellas has the rise of the local nobody, the climbing up the ladder to a name aro ...view middle of the document...
Drinking was always associated with the gangster of the 1930s but in ?Goodfellas? it is not as severely looked upon as it is legal. We the audience can see through this film how crime has changed over the years. In ?Goodfellas? we can see that the gangsters of today have moved on to bigger and better ways of making money i.e. drugs.The back door bars were gambling takes place. At the time it is only legal in licensed premises. Restaurants also seem to be associated heavily with this genre as the gangsters seem to do most of their law breaking or crooked deals.Again we can see that through the props ?Goodfellas? tries its best to follow the classic conventions set by the 1930s gangster films. Characteristically there is the ever presence of guns, flash cars and use of technology at the gangsters disposal. The props present tell the audience what sort of genre is being viewed, which is exactly what the 1930s films did. Again as times have changed, so have the props. ?Goodfellas? has altered props only because it was made some forty years after ?Public Enemy? or ?Little Caesar?. If ?Goodfellas? was made at the same time, the same conventions were props are concer...
