What do you get when you take Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Sharon Stone, the Mob and director Martin Scorsese and put them all in a blender?
The result is "Casino," an ambitious three-hour chronicle of the decadence of 1970s Las Vegas that will be showing tonight in Spaulding as part of the Film Society's ongoing series on auteurs.
"Casino" follows the actions of Sam "Ace" Rothstein, a mob-connected gambler, played by De Niro operating a Las Vegas casino in 1970s Las Vegas.
He falls hard for and marries Ginger McKenna, a showgirl played by Sharon Stone, but her gold-digging nature ultimately sends them both on a downward spiral.
Joe Pesci portrays Nicky Santaro, a childhood friend of Ace's who comes to Las Vegas a "made man" with his own personal agenda.
While on the one hand, "Casino" is a portrayal of the people involved in the gambling business, it is also an attempt in a broader fashion to tell the story of Las Vegas as an entity, focusing on murder, cheating, greed and lust in a way that is unwavering Scorsese.
Janet Maslin of The New York Times calls the film's culminating scene "a riotous, terrible meltdown that makes for one of the most scorching episodes Mr. Scorsese has ever filmed."
Scorsese comes from the first generation of American directors who were aware of their identities as auteurs. He attended New York University's film school in the 1960s at the time that the auteur theory was being disseminated in the U.S.
His style, as defined by early works like "Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver," now has an almost mythical reknown.
Cathartic violence is his signature, and he favors as his protagonist "the loner," a character who might have the semblance of a niche, yet for whatever reason stands just outside of his world. In that respect, this film fits very well into Scorsese's oeuvre.
"Casino" will also bring to mind Scorsese's 1990 film "GoodFellas," not only for the presence of De Niro, Pesci and the mob, but because both movies were co-scripted and based on non-fiction accounts by Nicholas Pileggi.
Though it possesses many of the classic Scorsese elements, "Casino" introduces a new player in the form of Sharon Stone.
Maslin wrote that Stone "will be nobody's idea of Hollywood fluff after this spectacular, emblematic performance." Mick La Salle of the San Francisco Chronicle said that "from here on, Stone's talent has to be taken seriously."
Many reviewers believe her performance to be the film's strongest aspect; it has won her a Golden Globe award and an Academy Award nomination.
Though "Casino" may not be the work that best embodies Scorsese's vision, it is better viewed as the result of the continuing evolution of his style as an artist.
