GOODFELLAS / FOODFELLAS gangster psychology (film analysis) Rob Ager / Collative Learning

Another masterpiece and best gangster movie in history, you think I’m funny ? How the hell am I funny? Sopranos & goodfellas food food food it’s Italian culture dude

I got hungry listening and watching this video

Its a bag of mix thats thrown,not the coke.

Rob...... this is one of your best. I'm going to go make some spaghetti now.

never watch the movie if you are hungry

Thats enough of the anchovies for now😂😂😂

This isn't a gangster theme. It's an Italian American culture thing.

This analysis gives me an appetite

"tomorrow we eat sandwiches, we gotta go on a diet." lmao

As others here have already stated, excellent analysis!

I work in a prison, and no inmates have steak and lobster - they can eat good, but this is crazy

The American obsession with Italian food is a big reason for their very poor overall health. They send out for tons of tinned tomatoes, strange cheeses and flour paste and thereby barely need to go to the supermarket - just make different shaped flour paste every day, add tinned tomatoes and chopped-up fatty meat and bingo, you're an American chef. 

When you go to America you'll be amazed how they never miss an opportunity to smother every dish in vast amounts of cheese, and they wonder why their hearts pack up so early. If Americans understood that a lot of the Italian diet is vegetables and salad (without those awful 'dressings') they may be able to hang on to their loved-ones a little longer. Wouldn't that be better?
Americans are one of the loveliest, most polite, most endearing, most hard-working, most hospitable, most enterprising and inventive peoples in the world, but are being slaughtered indiscriminately by the mystifying popularity of what they perceive to be Italian cuisine.

The blown out lighting, seemingly off framing, and ‘freshly captured’ looks of exaggerated expressions in the photos is some of the best in cinematic history. It really looks like period photos you found in a drawer years later!

Wow good vid

I currently have a root canal inflammation and chewing food hurts insanely much. just drinking soups or wolfing down stuff like scramled eggs... All I wanna say: cherish the food that you have eaten today and will tomorrow.
btw in university I watched the movie and went out and got razorblades to thinly slice the garlic and it just horribly burned in the pan instantly :D to me that recipe is the least believeae part of the movie 😅

There's a scene in The Godfather where I think Michael asks Kay if she wants to go get some ice cream. It's interesting you should say Italians like ice cream in particular.

Fun Fact: That part where they go to Tommy's mom's house. DeNiro rolled the ketchup bottle between his hands just like Jimmy Burke used to. DeNiro talked a lot with Henry about how Jimmy did things before filming.

I think the theme is that italians like to eat

As an Italian, I thought nothing of any of this. This is literally the food we grow up around. Pasta and cold cuts, wine, etc. We always did have vegetables also. When you buy them from your local food store, you usually eat them by force or necessity. But when your grandmother has a green thumb, and you pull those vegetables right out of the ground, there’s just something more special about it.
As a kid, I was always told finish your food. Granted I was a skinny kid naturally so I thought I was doing something wrong being that I didn’t care to eat everything in sight. I grew older, I developed a lot more of an appetite, and it was only a matter of time before people were telling me to stop eating Lol.
But the centering around food throughout the movie makes complete sense here. Italian families revolve around food.

maybe cannibals?

can Leonardo DiCaprio play the next Liotta?

Superb video, thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks.

I might like to add that during the post war deecades among Italian-Americans and (in my case, Lebanese and Armenians) we had a virtual conrucopia from mom, grandmom and any other woman. I think that someof the scenes are clearly metaphorical as well as literal, and show the luxury and piggishness and arrogance of the easy money crowd. However, since my people were hardly wealthy, we did have superior cooking and lots of it. Plus, to not eat to bursting was offensive to the various old ladies in the families. One example: low as our family food budget was, my mother shucked pennies weekly so that when Easter rolled around, she and perhaps ten other mothers began food preparations as early as two weeks apres. Rendering butter, grinding lamb, baking various treats, bread, cakes....and may the Lord have mercy on you if you poached any of these precious stores before we shouted HE IS RISEN! on Sunday after mass.
Another thing about your personl style: you are so much more thana film fan, thank you. Even if I don't learn anything, I am stimulated to think again about what you notice or hypothesize. Thanks for all the work. It is clealry a labor of love and I can imagine that this is the kind of love that attracts mammon! Thanks

Henny Youngman. “Take my wife…” oldest bit there is. 😂

This is on the point bro great video. 🎉👏 this carries into Sopranos as well and I suppose it can be used to show how sociopathic the characters are in both; in the fact that they talk about each in the same breath like killings like cooking up drugs (baking a cake as the cop says) or killing someone. Think it's also used to reiterate their heritage and attachment to Italian culture (this is moreover in Sopranos than Goodfellas though)
I've had similar convos with mates about the show and we didn't look into everything you mentioned in this having great relevance, but defo some great points. Cheers bro ❤

The weird way De Niro dispenses the ketchup at Tommy's mother's house...

It’s a lot to digest. Ha good one

I think the narrator is reading too much into the cannibalism/ food analogy, but his observation that Paulies sizzing sausages symbolizes his internal anger at Henry seems spot on!

Always appreciate how off-the-cuff your vides are. It's food for thought.

“You look like a GANGSTER!”

Great analysis Rob. I never noticed the food thing in Goodfellas. I'm sorta mad at myself because I know from watching Stanley Kubrick films, that you might have to pay closer attention to props being used in scenes, than you would, the dialog...

Perhaps all the other directors began to pay attention to what Kubrick was doing in his films, then began doing it in their films...

I would love for you to do an analysis on this movie and the way the color Red is used. It’s somewhat of a foreshadowing of the violence that is to come. Such as the cherry blossom trees as Henry is crossing the street to bludgeon Karen’s neighbor, or as Jimmy is directing Karen to go into the alleyway, etc. On one of my many viewings of this film, it’s something that jumped out to me. I LOVE your film analyses!

Great film and the sopranos greatest series ever

Excellent analysis 💯 Well done

You mentioned the lion as a symbol of monarchy because it is a predator, but in many cases it is probably because of the "Lion of Judah" symbol, which is either the tribe (old testament) or Jesus. This would reference a Christian monarch's claim of having divine right to rule through Jesus, instead of a self depiction as a random predator animal from a far away land.

Great analysis. Never caught the food thing and now I feel dumb for not seeing it.

Here's one for you though...

Why are gangsters called "wise guys"?

Because they understand why the waiters are waiters. They understand that, if you're not willing to take what you want, you HAVE TO be a waiter to survive.

That's why they don't respect them.

They're right.

Not moral. But right.

Italian mafia started with the Cosa Nostra which means "Our Thing". Due to economic collapse in Italy, there was a lack of government (no money to tax so government goes bye bye instead of doing their job when needed most). That's how mafia sets up and takes control.

You can either produce or you can take. That's the harsh reality. That's why how they justify their actions. That's why they celebrate food the way they do. They're celebrating what they have that others don't. They're celebrating what their way of life has brought them.

Damn it Rob... now I'm hungry 😄

Just got an add

Drug dealers also call drugs food

Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero from the Sopranos adjusting the fur coat rack at 9.08.

Italian food🥖🍝🍷

Speaking about food and Gangsters they even said that Diddy had a special meals for him while in prison so I assume he must've watched this movie and good some ideas also😅😅😅😅😅😄