[On June 20th, 1947, mobster Bugsy Siegel was killed in Beverly Hills. So for the 75th anniversary of that murder, I’m going to AmericanStudy Siegel’s role in the development of Las Vegas, along with other contexts for that tellingly American city. Leading up to a weekend post on Vegas in song!]
On the
important differences in how two gangster films portray the city.
Moe
Greene, an important minor
character in Francis Ford Coppola’s The
Godfather (1972), was loosely inspired by yesterday’s subject, Bugsy
Siegel. Greene is killed not in a Los Angeles home but in his Las Vegas hotel
and casino (part of an orchestrated series of such murders that conclude the
film, as that clip depicts), and not for allegedly stealing from the mob but
for standing in the way of fellow mob boss Michael Corleone’s attempts to buy
into the Vegas scene. But those changes between the real-life Siegel and the
fictional Greene only amplify the film’s depiction of Las Vegas as an extension
of the Corleone crime family’s world, another setting ruled by mob bosses who
represent adversaries and obstacles that Michael has to overcome as he ascends
to his father’s title and throne (a process that only deepens in The
Godfather, Part II, in the present of which Michael has moved the
family west to more thoroughly dominate that Vegas world). Audiences
occasionally see the more glamorous sides of Vegas in the Godfather films, but
they are clearly a façade behind which the criminal reality is always clearly
visible.
Sam “Ace”
Rothstein (Robert De Niro), the central character of Martin
Scorsese’s Casino (1995), was
apparently based on a different Las Vegas gangster who became prominent two
decades after Siegel’s death, Frank
“Lefty” Rosenthal. But Scorsese’s Rothstein sure has a lot in common with
Siegel as well: a Jewish kid from New York who moves west and to Vegas on behalf
of the mob, gains control of a hotel and casino, and is eventually killed by
his fellow mobsters due at least in part to his relationship with a Vegas socialite
(Sharon Stone’s Ginger
McKenna). As those plot details suggests, and as anyone even vaguely
familiar with Scorsese’s body of work will be unsurprised to hear, Casino emphasizes the connections
between Vegas and the mob even more fully than do the Godfather films, not only
through Rothstein but also and even more fully through his violent criminal
frenemy and the film’s third main character, the Mafia wiseguy Nicky Santoro
(played by Scorsese
favorite Joe Pesci). Yet at the same time, I’m not sure any film has made the
glittering façade of Las Vegas look more glamorous and alluring than does Casino, never more so than in its
justifiably famous
tracking shots.
That final
point is consistent with my
overall critique of Scorsese as far too often glamorizing the people and
practices his films ostensibly critique, and I know many other viewers and
AmericanStudiers would read Casino (like
all those films) differently. But I think the comparison between these two particular
films can also be read through the specific lens of images and narratives of
Las Vegas—and more exactly that whatever we think of Scorsese’s own perspective
on the themes his film presents, there’s no doubt that the character of
Rothstein is seduced by the glitz and glamour of Vegas (as, in their own ways,
are both Ginger and Nicky). Which makes it very difficult for any viewer of Casino not to be likewise seduced—that is,
even as De Niro’s voiceover behind those tracking shots is telling us that this
is how the casino takes our money, I’d argue that the shots themselves are
making us want to catch the next flight out to hand it over. Whereas the
Godfather films present a Vegas that more clearly corrupts and destroys everyone,
even the most powerful figures who come to be associated with it—and if we don’t
want to end up like Moe Greene, we’d best keep our distance.
Next Vegas
context tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Las Vegas contexts, histories, stories you’d highlight?
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