Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995) (Patreon)

BY REQUEST: Daniel Waller

Second viewing, last seen on HBO probably in '96. It's a film I haven't thought all that much about since then, and although I have a different perspective on it now, I can't say my overall opinion has improved. Where before I just found it kind of empty and self-important, I now see exactly what that means cinematically. This is Scorsese's Brian De Palma picture: a rote, almost meaningless narrative structure on which to hang the filmmaker's favorite formal moves. And while Scorsese has done this on a few occasions -- Cape Fear and Shutter Island, most obviously -- those films were overtly silly.

Casino, on the other hand, seems to want to be taken seriously. It does have a fair amount of camp value, especially in Sharon Stone's turn as Ginger, the unhinged putain fatale. Comporting herself like a coked-out Gena Rowlands in a two-bit soap opera, Stone cannot really escape the narratological position she's forced to occupy. She is a sex grifter, and her ability to play Ace / Sam (Robert De Niro) like a fiddle is what ultimately brings him low. We never get much background on Ginger, except that she's been skillful arm candy around the Strip for years. 

But is it perhaps asking too much for her to, you know, have some sort of comprehensible human psychology? What happened to her, what sort of damage has she sustained, that she will throw everything away for Lester the scumbag (James Woods), even going so far as to tie her daughter (Erika von Tagen) to the bed with panty hose? Ginger is little more than a machine for generating plot points, making sure that Ace's rise is compromised and his fall is assured.

I only single out Ginger because she is the most egregious example, but no one in Casino ever really exists outside their structural position. The troubled brotherhood between Ace and Nicky (Joe Pesci) is, in classical terms, something biblical, the Christ / Judas scenario or, perceived another way, two divergent and incompatible paths to glory. Sam has a skill set, understanding the odds and picking winners. And he wants to turn that ability into a legitimate position among the Las Vegas elite. Nicky, meanwhile, only knows the way of the Mob. They need each other, but their worldviews inevitably collide.

Scorsese occasionally drops little hints, the random ethnic slur, to gesture toward a cultural subtext. The tension between Sam and Nicky reflects the uneasy detente between Italian and Jewish gangsters, a fraught alliance that's at the heart of Vegas's origin story. But again, Casino, either through political sensitivity or just inattention, makes almost nothing of this. The two men are relative ciphers, and perhaps this is intentional, since Scorsese has always been more invested in the wiseguys than in above-board capitalists and their routine transactions. (This is what makes The Wolf of Wall Street so much fun. It's about a scam disguised as investment, rather than an investment borne from a scam.)

What Casino clearly does care about it the movement of cash, in bundles and suitcases, the back rooms where Made Men discuss their cut, the greasing of bureaucratic palms, and above all, the breathless tracking shots across the casino floor. Scorsese's over-reliance on period needle-drops verges on self-parody (a bit like my own use of three hyphens in a single sentence, capped with an extended parenthetical). But again, like a De Palma film, Casino is just a director flexing his muscles and trading on flash. And it works, to an extent. The three hours fly by, Schoonmaker's rhythms are flawless, and the bursts of violence arrive like musical refrains. It's fine, but that's all it is.

Although this is clearly awesome:

We love the 80s.