Martin Scorsese remembers the harsh criticism he received for his acclaimed film 'Goodfellas'

 

Martin Scorsese is a living legend of the seventh art, as demonstrated by the praise that his new film, 'The Moon Killers', has garnered, or the recognition that his previous film, 'The Irishman', received. However, he himself wanted to remember one of the lowest moments of his popularity: the premiere, in 1990, of the now emblematic 'Goodfellas', known in Spain as 'One of Ours' and in Latin America as 'Goodfellas'. '.

Although the film conquered specialized critics and received six Oscar nominations - Joe Pesci won the award for best supporting actor - an important sector of public opinion reacted to this story of Italian-American gangsters with alarming hostility. In the opinion of his detractors, Martin Scorsese was doing a disservice to the youth of the time, since he supposedly portrayed the world of organized crime in a positive and even aspirational sense.

"It was a nightmare, people were furious," he recalled about the film's premiere in conversation with presenter Stephen Colbert. "They left the cinema indignant. It turns out that they didn't like that black humor and the degree of violence. The glamor of evil. That was what drove them crazy," he explained before proceeding to defend his approach. "But I said: 'That was the impression that the young people who grew up in that environment had.' And in the last half hour of the film you see [the protagonists] pay for it," he added about the moralizing outcome of the plot.

The film featured masterful performances by Robert De Niro, the late Ray Liotta and the aforementioned Joe Pesci. Martin Scorsese has had the opportunity to work on numerous occasions with De Niro, who appears in the aforementioned 'The Irishman' and 'The Moon Killers', but he will no longer be able to remove the thorn of not having managed to recruit Marlon Brando for one of their projects. The filmmaker had occasional conversations with Brando, whom he has defined as "a genius", which could have led to a historic collaboration, but none of them came to fruition. Fortunately, Scorsese still has time to fulfill another of his dreams, directing Barbra Streisand.