Casino (film)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title Casino
Original title Casino
Country of production USA , France
original language English
Publishing year 1995
length 178 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Martin Scorsese
script Nicholas Pileggi ,
Martin Scorsese
production Barbara De Fina
camera Robert Richardson
cut Thelma Schoonmaker
occupation

Casino is a thriller - drama of 1995 directed by Martin Scorsese , which the screenplay with Nicholas Pileggi wrote. His book of the same name served as a template.

action

The film begins in 1983 when Sam Rothstein - known as "Ace" - was just getting into his car and was the victim of a car bomb when an explosive device exploded when the ignition key was turned .

Now we are fading back ten years to the Las Vegas of the 1970s: Because of his unique success as a professional player and his good relationship with the boss of the Chicago Outfit , Remo Gaggi, Ace is commissioned to manage the new Tangiers casino in the metropolis of gambling - and although he is not an Italian-American but a Jew . In order to avoid difficulties with the authorities because of his criminal record, he should only apply for a license as a restaurant manager. As front man of the regulatory agency is not biased Philip Green is used as an official casino manager, everything is emerging, which is submitted to it. In addition, the police and the authorities are being “bribed” anyway and do nothing of their own accord to prevent such business practices.

With many years of experience as a gambler and bookmaker, and a perfectionist management style, Ace managed to double the Tangier's sales and the house experienced a boom. The bosses have their share paid out regularly by having not yet booked and registered income brought directly from the counting room or the casino safe by a money messenger.

So that the funds can flow smoothly, Ace's childhood friend Nicky Santoro, an unscrupulous "enforcer" (apparently in the rank of a Capo regime of the Cosa Nostra ) is sent to Las Vegas for protection and control. Nicky doesn't intend to just play the protector for Ace, especially since he doesn't get a share of the revenue from the casino levy. He begins to develop criminal activities on a large scale for his own account. Since Nicky's gang does not adhere to any rules - he himself quite openly plays wrongly in the casinos - he will soon be entered in the Black Book and thus subject to a general entry ban for all casinos in Las Vegas.

Ace's only weakness is Ginger, a successful high-class prostitute whom he even marries after giving birth to a child, although he knows she does not love him and continues to have an almost obedient relationship with her childhood friend and former pimp Lester Diamond. The run-down junkie turns to Ginger repeatedly in his constant financial need.

Ace wants to demonstrate his love for Ginger with an act of trust by granting her control over his safe deposit box with two million US dollars, which he had kept for emergencies; if z. B. their daughter would be kidnapped.

Bored of a life of wealth, inactivity and luxury, Ginger becomes more and more dissatisfied and unhappy, becomes addicted to alcohol and other drugs , neglects their daughter and has an affair with Nicky.

Nicky agrees to become her new protector. When Ginger asks him to kill Ace, however, he refuses, as this would endanger his reputation with the bosses. Nicky - already struck by his own "lotter life" - would have to fear for his life. Not because his gang's criminal activities are getting worse and worse; merely disclosing his relationship with Ginger would be a violation of the tacit code of honor of the "family".

But the Tangiers and Ace come under pressure because Ace rests with the authorities when he announces an obviously incompetent employee without notice, who had only got his job because he is the brother of the local politician Pat Webb - county commissioner of Clark County - is . He seeks Ace personally to persuade him to hire the man again. But Ace categorically refuses. Webb leaves the room threatening that Ace is not at home. The local politician is now urging the authorities to review Ace's casino license. In an interview with a journalist, Ace lets himself be carried away to say that he is actually the boss in the casino and thus publicly exposes “manager” Philip Green as a front man . When it turns out that Ace had only submitted an application for a license so far, which has not yet been decided, Webb urges a quick hearing in which Ace's application is rejected without Ace itself being heard.

In the meantime the general pressure of persecution by the authorities on the environment of the leading Mafia family has increased and the FBI has started extensive wiretapping. When a somewhat limited “family member” vented his anger all too clearly in his bugged shop, a number of “men of honor” were arrested and charged. While in custody, they order contract killings . In a whole series of murders, witnesses, those who knew about it and those who were marginally involved are eliminated.

At this point in time, the bomb attack on Ace that preceded the film also takes place, which, however, survives - only slightly injured - because a heavy metal plate, which is the largest, was mounted under the driver's seat on his 1981 Cadillac Eldorado - allegedly because of problems with the balance Part of the explosive force of the bomb placed under the passenger seat repels.

The assassination was apparently not an order from the bosses, but rather Nicky's own initiative. The bosses have had enough of his antics and let him and his brother brutally beat up with baseball bats in a corn field and buried alive. Ginger finally separates from Ace and empties the safe deposit box, but she is watched by FBI investigators and arrested temporarily after leaving the bank.

Released, she quickly loses all money due to her drug addiction and eventually dies of an overdose in Los Angeles. The Tangiers is - like many other casinos - demolished. In their place new casinos are being built that are run by large corporations and whose construction is financed through junk bonds . Ace leaves Las Vegas and spends the rest of his life in seclusion with his daughter as a successful bookmaker.

background

  • The main characters Sam Rothstein (Robert De Niro) and Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) tell and explain the events in the film from the retrospective either as voice-over or off camera . Only in one scene you can hear a voiceover of the supporting character Frank Marino (Frank Vincent).
  • Production costs were estimated at around $ 52 million. The film grossed around US $ 116 million in cinemas around the world, around US $ 42 million of that in the United States.
  • It was released in the US on November 22, 1995 and in Germany on March 14, 1996.
  • Although it is a fictional feature film, the story is based in many areas on actual events and characters. The Tangiers casino shown corresponds to the former Stardust casino . The timing of the events is roughly the same: the assassination attempt on Frank Rosenthal actually took place on October 4, 1982, the film dates it to 1983. Despite the numerous parallels to reality, they also took some artistic liberties. B. Geraldine McGee (portrayed as Ginger in the film) has three children, two with Frank Rosenthal and one with her long-time friend Lenny Marmor.
actor role based on
Robert De Niro Sam "Ace" Rothstein Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal
Joe Pesci Nicholas "Nicky" Santoro Tony "The Ant" Spilotro
Sharon Stone Ginger McKenna Rothstein Geraldine McGee Rosenthal
Frank Vincent Frankie Marino Frank Cullotta
Don Rickles Billy Sherbert Murray Ehrenberg
Pasquale Cajano Remo Gaggi Joseph Aiuppa
James Woods Lester Diamond Leonard "Lenny" marble
Kevin Pollak Philip Green All luck
Alan King Andy Stone Allen Dorfman
Bill Allison John Nance George Vandermark
Philip Suriano Dominick Santoro Michael Spilotro
Vinny Vella Artie Piscano Carl "Tuffy" DeLuna
Nobu Matsuhisa KK Ichikawa Akio Kashiwagi
Richard Riehle Charlie "Clean Face" Clark Morris Shenker
Dick Smothers Nevada State Senator Harrison Roberts US Senator Harry Reid
Oscar Goodman Oscar Goodman Oscar Goodman
Ffolliott "Fluff" Le Coque Anna Scott Tamara Rand

Trivia

  • The film was shot almost entirely in and around Las Vegas. The casino and office scenes originated in the Riviera Las Vegas .
  • In the opening credits of the film it is stated that it is based on the book of the same name by Nicholas Pileggi . In the audio commentary on the film, he explained that he was working on the book and the script at the same time, and that the script for the film was completed earlier.
  • According to a count by Family Media Guide , the word "fuck" (including variations such as "fucking", "fucked", etc.) was used 398 times in the film, making this film the highest number of such expressions in the year it was released. This only applies to the English original version, in the German dubbing different expressions were used again and again.
  • Artie Piscano's mother is played in the film by Catherine Scorsese, the director's mother, whose granddaughter of the same name and daughter of the director in turn appears as the daughter of Piscano.
  • Joe Pesci broke the same rib while shooting his killing scene falling into the excavated grave that he had broken fifteen years earlier while filming Scorsese's film Like a Wild Bull .
  • The music during the opening credits as well as during the blasting of the casino towards the end of the film is the final chorus of the St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach (“We sit down with tears”). The opening credits were designed by Saul Bass and his wife Elaine. The end credits were accompanied by the “Thème de Camille” by the French film composer Georges Delerue , which could also be heard in some scenes of the film. This piece originally comes from the 1963 film " The Contempt (Le Mépris)".
  • The trio De Niro, Pesci and Woods also played in the Sergio Leone film Once Upon a Time in America , of the rise of some Mobster the Kosher Nostra is in New York.
  • The film is the eighth collaboration between Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese and also the third of four Scorsese mafia films to date.
  • Director Martin Scorsese stated in an interview that he had hired a former professional killer as a consultant for the film.
  • There are two false dice on the sleeve of the special edition DVD . Usually the two opposite sides add up to seven. This is not the case on the shell - a metaphor for the fraud portrayed in the film.
  • Nick Mazzola, who actually made his money as a dealer in the casinos of Las Vegas, played the blackjack dealer, whom Joe Pesci referred to as a "handsome guy" in the film and had to endure some insults from him. He had already given the tickets for Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in Rain Man (1988) .

Reviews

source rating
Rotten tomatoes
critic
audience
Metacritic
critic
audience
IMDb

“A meticulous analysis of the gambling town as well as a description of the power, money and pride of tempted people. The unmelodramatic accuracy of this portrait, hidden behind virtuoso cinematic ideas, refuses purely emotional access and makes the film more difficult for the audience to consume. A complex and, in some intolerable scenes of violence, certainly also a controversial conclusion to Martin Scorsese's moral gangster stories, which began with 'Hexenkessel' and 'Good Fellas'. "

- Lexicon of international film

“If the mafia didn't exist, then it would have to be invented. Hardly any other institution shows the dark side of capitalism with such clarity. The mafia has pushed free enterprise back to its origins: under the romantic surface of the trader as a hero, power and violence are hidden. No wonder that this branch of industry has always interested a film industry. [...] And hardly any other director has demythologized the beautiful appearance of the Mafia like Martin Scorsese. [...] And in no other film does he succeed better than in Casino, which exposes the bourgeois traders in the film heroes. Almost like in a documentary, Scorsese shows how the Las Vegas gambling dens work and how the mafia secures their winnings. "

- Rüdiger Suchsland : artechock.de

“Scorsese's Las Vegas design is undoubtedly the boldest, the greatest. At the same time, the old master of Italian-American cinema […] is by no means afraid of the anthemic enlargement and glorification that Hollywood cinema allowed and allows American history to do. But, and this is the miracle, Scorsese can enlarge and transfigure the past without giving up its ruthlessly precise realism, without having to withhold the (mostly brutal) truth of the gambling city. And here we are at the violence. The story of Las Vegas is the story of the really big money that was milked from visitors around the clock with enormous skill and cool routine. […] So the film, which is based on an authentic reportage, tells of greasing politicians with money, comfort and sex, of buying the unions - and of deterring competitors, of punishing traitors and deceiving fraudsters. Scorsese knows how it goes; it shows how killer kill killers with baseball bats, how falsehoods' hands are smashed with hammer, how adversaries are literally forced to confess from their heads. And, similar to his other mafia film, ' GoodFellas ', he shows that the violence necessary to maintain the Mafia business is inevitably accompanied by irascible excess violence, that the apparently 'reasonable' desire to kill oneself turns into the 'unreasonable' 'The lust for murder leads to self-destruction. […] 'Las Vegas was to players what Lourdes was to the infirm and crippled,' De Niro once said. This is exactly how the Catholic Scorsese portrayed the city with fervent truth. "

- Hellmuth Karasek : Der Spiegel 11/1996

Awards

Academy Awards 1996

Golden Globe Awards 1996

Further

American Cinema Editors 1996

Sindacato Nazionale Giornalisti Cinematografici Italiani 1996

MTV Movie Awards 1996 - nominated in the categories

See also

literature

  • Nicholas Pileggi: Casino. Droemer Knaur, 1996, ISBN 3-426-60439-6 .
  • Nicholas Pileggi, Martin Scorsese: Casino. Faber and Faber, 1996, ISBN 0-571-17992-4 . (English edition)
  • Dana Poppenberg / Gerhard Poppenberg: Martin Scorsese. Introduction to his films and film aesthetics. Paderborn 2018. pp. 112–121.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for casino . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2009 (PDF; test number: 74 742-a DVD).
  2. ↑ http://www.familymediaguide.com/media/onDVD/media-396959.html ( Memento from May 6, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Murderously well advised. In: sueddeutsche.de. May 17, 2010, accessed March 20, 2018 .
  4. ↑ a b Casino at Rotten Tomatoes , accessed January 30, 2014
  5. ↑ a b Casino at Metacritic , accessed January 30, 2014
  6. ↑ Casino in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  7. ↑ Casino. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed November 15, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  8. ↑ http://www.artechock.de/film/text/kritik/c/casino.htm
  9. ↑ Hellmuth Karasek: Film: The violence of money . In: Der Spiegel . No. 11 , 1996 ( online - Mar. 11, 1996 ).