Put Macho Pride Aside: Lorraine Bracco Is The True Center Of ‘Goodfellas’

There’s a scene in Goodfellas I could never quite understand until I read Kyle Smith’s column this week that suggested — rather, explicitly stated — that women are “not capable” of appreciating Martin Scorcese’s epic crime drama. It’s the scene in which the euphorically murderous Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) shoots poor Spider in the foot during a poker game. (He later kills Spider, played by a fresh-faced Michael Imperioli)

When I watched Spider writhe in pain on that basement floor, my small woman brain wondered, Geez, how could someone be so depraved? How could you shoot some poor schmuck in the foot?

Then I got to the end of Smith’s column — wherein he writes a ridiculous four-sentence synopsis of the film if a woman had told it — and understood Tommy’s urge. Kudos to the readers (female and male) who responded to Smith’s bizarre column. My only response is what you’re about to read below: me (a woman) discussing the film and its most important character (who—gasp!—is also a woman.)

Let me go back for a moment.

In April, the Tribeca Film Festival closed with a bang at the Beacon Theatre with a 25th anniversary tribute to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. A screening was followed by a Q&A hosted by Jon Stewart with the film’s stars: Robert De Niro, who co-founded the festival and plays the coldblooded Jimmy Conway; Ray Liotta, who plays Henry Hill; Lorraine Bracco, Henry’s vivacious and feisty wife, Karen; and Paul Sorvino, the local mob capo, Paulie. (Missing in action was Joe Pesci, who played Tommy; and Scorsese, as he was shooting a movie in Taiwan.)

September will mark the official 25th anniversary of the film’s release; until then, brace yourself for a saturation of Scorsese hagiography. Of course there’s good reason for the nostalgia: the film, based on Nicholas Pileggi’s bestseller Wise Guys, is one of the great cinematic feats of last century, eclipsing other mob movies of its time — Scarface (1983), certainly The Godfather Part III (1990), and Carlito’s Way (1993). (Since The Godfather and its sequel came out in the early seventies, I’ll exclude them from this assessment.)

More than eclipsing other gangster films, Goodfellas reimagined the genre. Blending documentary-like realism with heavy-handed storytelling — freeze frames, jump-cuts, long takes, voice-overs — Scorsese exposed the mob in a way we’d never seen before. The compelling narrative, focusing on the rise and fall of Henry and Karen, is coupled with an eclectic soundtrack that enriches the movie’s memorable scenes.

During the Q&A at the Beacon Theatre, Jon Stewart mostly fawned over the film. But at one point, he turned to Lorraine Bracco and asked how she ever “found the confidence” to work on a movie with so many (male) “heavy-hitters.” To her credit, Bracco brushed off the remark, reminding Stewart that she was a professional and simply did her “homework” before filming.

Stewart’s comment was unexpectedly condescending, questionably sexist, and definitely telling. For the past quarter-century, the spotlight has stayed on Liotta, Pesci, and De Niro — not surprising since the film is about wise guys.

Is Henry, our main character and narrator who breaks the fourth wall in the famous final courtroom scene, the film’s anchor? Or is it psychopathic Tommy, the only almost-made man of the crew? Or Jimmy, a legend by his late twenties — before Henry even hit puberty? (De Niro is, after all, the center of that movie poster.)

I happen to think it’s Karen Hill — even if Bracco doesn’t appear on the poster.

By the end of Goodfellas, Tommy is whacked, Jimmy is in jail, and Henry is in witness protection after informing on his friends. But Karen suffers the most. Though she condones and is ultimately complicit in Henry’s life of crime (which devolves into drug- and gun-smuggling), her undoing is the true tragedy of the film. She starts out as a nice Jewish girl devoted to her parents, and winds up a mobster’s coked-out wife who must leave her family forever in order to join Henry in hiding.

We first meet Karen about a half-hour into the film when she’s set-up on a double date with Henry (along with her friend and Tommy). It does not go well, but Scorsese soon surprises us. After thirty minutes of hearing from Henry, the audience gets voice-over from Karen: “I couldn’t stand him. I thought he was really obnoxious. He kept fidgeting around.”

It’s the first time Karen challenges Henry’s authority as the film’s narrator, and she provides an alternate point of view. She observes Henry’s world as an outsider. (Karen comes from a respectable Jewish family from Lawrence, a part of Long Island’s Five Towns. Coincidentally, Bracco was raised in Westbury, about 30 minutes from Lawrence.)

A second double date is arranged, and Henry is a no-show. But Karen is nobody’s fool: she forces Tommy to take her to Henry, who is hanging out on a street corner with his fellow hooligans. She gets out of the car, slams the door, walks toward Henry — it’s a cross between a charge and a strut — and tells him off.

Henry is completely taken aback. It’s the first time he really sees Karen (who happens to look stunning in a form-fitting red dress). Later, we watch him ogle women — his mistresses, Janice (Gina Mastrogiacomo) and Sandy (Debi Mazar) — but this is different. It’s not really a male gaze, though Henry admits in a voice-over that “she looked good” while she screams on the sidewalk.

“She had these violet eyes,” Henry says. “I remember she’s screaming, but mostly I’m looking at her eyes. They were just like Elizabeth Taylor’s. That’s what everybody said.”

Their next date goes smoother.

To impress Karen, Henry takes her to the Copacabana. They leave the car keys with a valet and enter the club through the back door. Scorsese’s camera follows them down a flight of stairs, through passageways peppered with people, through a crowded kitchen, and finally into the nightclub, where the maître d’ acknowledges Henry and orders two waiters to place a table for them front and center. Oh, and it all unfolds while The Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me,” a giddy song about new love written by Phil Spector, plays in its entirety.

This exhilarating, one-take, three-minute Steadicam shot is one of the most memorable moments in film history. Here, Scorsese with a camera is like da Vinci with a paintbrush. But the scene is more than just a technical triumph: Karen’s descent into the dark labyrinth of the Copa predicts her descent into Henry’s dark world of crime. They emerge in the Copa’s ornate dining room, the setting of a modern Manhattan bacchanal. By the time they’re seated, Karen is smitten with Henry. And so are we.

There’s a specific moment after the Copa when Karen transforms from titillated girlfriend, intrigued by Henry’s colorful lifestyle, to his partner in crime. After Henry pistol-whips a guy who gropes Karen, he hands her the gun to hide.

“I know there are women, like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriends gave them a gun to hide,” Karen says in a voice-over. “But I didn’t. I gotta admit the truth: it turned me on.”

When Karen takes the gun, Scorsese films the exchange from above, as if it were some sort of ritual. After Karen stashes it, Scorsese shrewdly cuts to a shot of a groom (Henry) breaking glass with his right foot — a Jewish ritual at wedding ceremonies. They get married. In a way, the gun unifies them, officially bringing Karen into his “family.”

After Henry and Karen marry, she’s forced to socialize exclusively with Henry’s associates and their wives. When Karen goes to a party hosted by Jimmy’s wife, Mickey, she is shocked by the vulgarity of the whole scene.

“They had bad skin and wore too much make-up,” Karen remarks. “I mean, they didn’t look very good. They looked beat-up.” This observation foreshadows Karen’s condition decades into her marriage: tired, disillusioned, beat-up (not necessarily by Henry, but by their unstable, crime-ridden lifestyle).

But Karen embraces being a mob wife and all the perks that come with it. My favorite scene happens when Henry leaves for work one the morning, and she asks him for money to go shopping. She responds by asking her how much she needs. Instead of replying with a dollar amount, Karen uses her thumb and index figure to indicate the volume of cash. The perks of being married to the mob are designer clothes and expensive jewelry, luxurious vacations, an ornately decorated house in the suburbs, and so on.

Their marriage soon becomes toxic. One of the better-known Karen moments takes place in the lobby of an apartment, where Henry has put up his mistress, Janice Rossi. Karen shows up, daughters in tow, and uses the building’s intercom to call Rossi, the super, and anyone who’ll listen, and scream that there’s a “whore living in 2R.” (Apparently, during the TFF screening, everyone went crazy during this scene, and a fan shouted, “I love you Lorraine!”)

Here, Scorsese makes another brilliant cut: this time from Rossi’s apartment to Karen and Henry’s bedroom. Karen sits astride Henry’s torso in bed with a pistol pointed at his face. We see this through Henry’s POV as he wakes up. The gun is in focus and in the center of the frame aimed at the camera — aimed at us. We then switch to Karen’s POV as she desperately tries to scare her husband into not messing around anymore.

The whole exchange is completely over-the-top, yet still believable. Henry eventually calms Karen down, takes the gun, and then smacks her, making an empty threat to kill her. He leaves her on the floor sobbing.

But Karen’s not weak. While Henry’s in prison, she becomes the breadwinner by helping him smuggle drugs. Later, when the DEA raids their home, she flushes $60,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet (not knowing it’s the only money they have) and again hides a gun — this time in her underwear.

By now, Henry, facing major prison time, believes he is in danger of getting whacked. Karen is naïve, perhaps in denial, and meets Jimmy one afternoon in his warehouse, where he gives her some money. The scene that follows is the most suspenseful of the entire film.

Was Karen about to be whacked? (It’s never explicit, but, yes, of course she was.) But she gets out of there alive.

Say what you want about Karen Hill’s descent into darkness, but unlike most of the wise guys, she’s a survivor.

Briana Fasone was born in New York City in 1989, the year real-life Karen Hill finally divorced Henry. She writes about film, television, feminism, and occasionally Madonna. Her work has appeared in Travel + Leisure, Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, Slate, and other publications. She is the author of many tweets and the curator of this site.