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By Jimmy Don Ventura

Movie Critic, Stockton Telegram-Dispatch
Guest Reviewer — CMC Blog

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Now I know what some of y’all are thinking.

“Jimmy Don, Goodfellas is one of the greatest gangster movies ever made.”

Wrong.

Goodfellas is one of the greatest automobile documentaries ever made that accidentally got overrun by murderers.

I watched the whole thing again this week, and somewhere about halfway through, I realized Martin Scorsese wasn’t filming gangsters at all. He was filming automobiles and allowing human beings to temporarily borrow them before ruining their own lives.

The cars are the real stars.

People come and go.

The Cadillacs remain.

At least until the FBI gets involved.

Now before anybody from New York writes a letter, understand that I’m a West Texas man. We judge civilization by entirely different metrics.

We don’t ask, “How much money does he have?”

We ask, “What’s he driving, and does he back into parking spaces?”

Those answers tell you everything.

And Goodfellas may be the greatest answer sheet ever assembled.

Let’s begin.

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Tommy DeVito’s 1961 Chevrolet Impala Convertible

This car is absolutely perfect.

White.

Low.

Elegant.

Beautiful enough to drive to church.

Terrifying enough to transport a body in the trunk.

That’s versatility.

Tommy DeVito, played by Joe Pesci, is a human tornado wrapped inside a tailored suit.

He’s unpredictable.

He’s funny.

He’s dangerous.

And his 1961 Chevrolet Impala Convertible is exactly the same way.

I’ve always believed 1961 Chevrolets occupy one of the sweetest spots in American automotive history.

They’re not overstyled.

They’re not restrained.

They’re sitting right in the middle where designers still had confidence and accountants hadn’t taken over the building yet.

The car has grace.

But then Tommy gets behind the wheel.

Suddenly every mile becomes a felony.

That opening scene where they discover Billy Batts still moving around in the trunk may be one of the greatest uses of an automobile in movie history.

Because here’s what Scorsese understands.

Cars are confessionals.

People reveal who they really are inside automobiles.

You can hide a lot in a living room.

You can’t hide much behind a steering wheel at 2:30 in the morning.

Especially if somebody’s kicking around in the trunk.

I don’t approve of murder, naturally.

But I do appreciate proper utilization of trunk space.

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Johnny Roastbeef’s 1979 Cadillac Coupe DeVille

Lord have mercy.

The pink Cadillac.

This thing deserves its own agent.

Johnny Roastbeef commits one of humanity’s oldest mistakes.

He confuses being rich with being invisible.

Jimmy Conway specifically says don’t draw attention to yourselves after the airport heist.

So naturally Johnny buys a hot pink Cadillac.

That’s like a bank robber in Fort Stockton deciding to escape in the Goodyear Blimp.

A Cadillac says a lot about a person.

A pink Cadillac screams.

It announces itself.

It introduces itself.

It sends Christmas cards.

That car could’ve been seen from Midland.

I love it.

It’s ridiculous.

But that’s the point.

Scorsese understands vanity is often the first step toward destruction.

By the time Johnny and his wife meet their unfortunate end inside that Cadillac, the car has become a symbol.

A giant pink tomb.

That’s dark.

But that’s also brilliant filmmaking.

The automobile became the warning label nobody read.

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Henry Hill’s 1979 Cadillac Coupe DeVille Custom Phaeton

This one may be my favorite.

Brown.

Long.

Overstuffed.

Completely unnecessary.

Just magnificent.

You could land a crop duster on that hood.

Henry Hill has reached the peak of his career.

Money’s flowing.

Everybody’s smiling.

Nobody’s sleeping.

That’s never a good sign.

The brown Cadillac represents success in its most temporary form.

The thing about luxury cars is they lie beautifully.

A Cadillac tells you everything is fine.

Meanwhile your entire empire is on fire behind you.

That’s the genius of the movie.

The prettier the cars become, the uglier life gets.

By the time Henry is driving around in this rolling palace, he’s already doomed.

He just doesn’t know it yet.

I’ve met a lot of people like that.

People who buy expensive things because they’re trying to outdrive consequences.

Doesn’t work.

Consequences have V8 engines too.

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Karen Hill’s 1981 Volvo 244 GL

Now here’s the smartest person in the whole film.

Karen.

She drives a Volvo.

Everybody else drives ego.

Karen drives survival.

The Volvo 244 GL may be the least exciting car ever manufactured.

And I mean that as the highest compliment possible.

It’s practical.

Dependable.

Safe.

You could drive one through the apocalypse and still make it to your dentist appointment.

The boxy little Swedish refrigerator sitting among all those giant American luxury cars is hilarious.

It doesn’t belong.

Which is exactly why it belongs.

Karen is trying to stay tethered to reality.

Everyone else is floating into outer space.

The Volvo is her anchor.

I admire that.

Though if she’d moved to Fort Stockton and started coming to Grounds for Divorce, Lucinda would’ve spotted trouble inside thirty-seven seconds.

Women know these things.

Lucinda could’ve saved half the cast.

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Bruce’s 1966 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray

Now we’re talking.

This red Stingray is gorgeous.

Low.

Sharp.

Aggressive.

It looks fast standing still.

But poor Bruce made a tactical error.

He forgot Karen wasn’t dating a normal person.

He’s got this beautiful Corvette and somehow thinks that’s enough.

No sir.

You don’t impress mobsters with Corvettes.

You impress mobsters by not existing in their orbit.

Henry beating Bruce with a pistol is uncomfortable to watch.

But the Corvette serves an important storytelling purpose.

It’s the last glimpse of normal middle-class ambition.

Bruce bought a sports car.

Henry bought an empire.

One is healthier than the other.

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The Witness Protection 1978 Ford Fairmont Squire

Then we arrive at the saddest automobile in cinematic history.

The Fairmont Squire.

Bless its heart.

This poor thing never hurt anybody.

It simply showed up at the wrong point in Henry Hill’s life.

One day you’re driving Cadillacs.

The next day you’re driving a beige station wagon and eating egg noodles with ketchup.

Now I happen to love Ford Fairmonts.

They’re honest cars.

Dependable cars.

Cars built for ordinary lives.

But ordinary was exactly what Henry feared.

The station wagon represents something worse than prison.

It represents anonymity.

No more glamour.

No more excitement.

No more headlines.

Just school pickups and grocery runs.

Honestly?

That sounds peaceful.

But Henry couldn’t appreciate it.

He’d spent too much time mistaking chaos for happiness.

And that, dear readers, reminds me of an incident involving Lucinda.

Because unfortunately, I have my own Fairmont Squire story.

Back when Lucinda and I were juniors at Jim Bowie High School, my mother owned a 1978 Ford Fairmont Squire station wagon.

Fake woodgrain.

Bench seats.

The smell of Armor All mixed with cigarette smoke and Aqua Net.

It was basically a mobile den.

One Friday night I borrowed it for a date.

Now, Lucinda has always been beautiful. Has she gotten better with age? Of course she has. But in high school she was a goddess to be worshipped, and I was more than willing to kneel at the altar.

Back then, before she became the Queen of the Bunn-O-Matic, and the Keeper of All Fort Stockton Secrets, she had that same chestnut hair and those same eyes that make a man forget basic arithmetic.

We ended up out at Lake Leon.

The stars were out.

The radio was playing.

One thing led to another.

The rear seats folded down and the hand-quilted blanket from my grandmother was spread open like a magic carpet.

In hindsight, fold-down rear seats were an engineering feature Ford probably never intended to facilitate teenage romance.  It was certainly never what my grandmother ever intended with her fine handiwork.

Suddenly there we were in the throes of passion.  The kind of physical response that can only be the result of teenage hormones and fake woodgrain.  That’s when every light around us disappeared.

Pitch black.  Blacker than Mayor Goodman’s heart.  Blacker than a pot of fresh Folgers.

Then another vehicle silently rolled up beside us with its headlights off.

The lights clicked on.

There stood Lucinda’s stepfather.

Now let me explain something.  He wasn’t in the mafia.  He worked in the oil fields.  Which, in West Texas, may as well be the same thing.

That man looked exactly like someone who owned a shovel and had strong opinions about geography.

I immediately became convinced I was about to sleep with the fishes at the bottom of Lake Leon.

The window rolled down.

He looked at us.

He looked at the Fairmont.

Then he said four words.

“Boy, get your pants.”

I’ve never moved faster in my entire life.

To this day I think that’s why I still have decent blood pressure.

Fear is cardio.

Lucinda was trying not to laugh.

I was trying not to die.

Then he simply drove away.

No speech.

No threats.

Nothing.

Which was somehow worse.

I drove home at exactly twenty-eight miles per hour.

I parked the Fairmont in the driveway.

I kissed the hood and thanked Ford Motor Company for building such an accommodating station wagon.

I’ve never forgotten that night.  I’ve relived the moment in my mind repeatedly, right up to the point of a burly man knocking on the glass before I could become a ‘made’ man.

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And that’s why Scorsese understood automobiles better than almost every director alive.

Cars aren’t transportation.

They’re memory storage devices.

Every dent is a story.

Every seat has a secret.

Every dashboard has witnessed things no jury will ever hear.

In Goodfellas, the automobiles become extensions of their owners.

They rise.

They prosper.

They become ridiculous.

Then they collapse.

Just like the people.

In the end, Henry Hill loses everything.

The fancy Cadillacs disappear.

The excitement evaporates.

And all that’s left is a station wagon and an ordinary life.

Which, if we’re being honest, might’ve been the happiest ending available. At least one that didn’t involve defiling your grandmother’s old quilt.

Because sometimes the greatest luxury in America isn’t a pink Cadillac.

It’s being boring enough that nobody’s looking for you anymore.

FINAL RATING: 4½ HITS out of 5 🔫🔫🔫🔫💥

Martin Scorsese earns every one of them for using automobiles as extensions of the characters’ personalities, perfectly tracking their rise in power, wealth, ego, and eventual downfall.

The gangsters were memorable.

The dialogue was legendary.

But the cars?

The cars told the truth.

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