Our Daily Trailer: CASINO
Our Daily Trailer theme for the entire month (!) is films that were snubbed at the Oscars, and who has been more snubbed at the Oscars than Martin Scorsese? Casino is, without a doubt, my favorite Scorsese film. Although Sharon Stone was rightfully nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, Casino was snubbed in every other applicable category. No Best Picture, no Best Cinematography or Editing, no Best Director nomination - nothing. This is the same year that Leaving Las Vegas lost the Best Director Oscar to Mel Gibson for Braveheart. This is the same year that Susan Sarandon beat Sharon Stone for Best Actress for her performance in Dead Man Walking; Queen Meryl Streep was also nominated that year for The Bridges of Madison County.
Casino is the thematic sibling to Goodfellas, but it's a film I prefer in many ways: the shady, dirty glitz of Sam Rothstein's casino empire, the abrupt and blunt acts of violence that are portrayed with horrifically honest finality, and Robert De Niro's double-edged personality as Rothstein - a man who is charismatic and calculating at best, intimidating and self-centered at worst. The way he treats Stone's Ginger like a trophy that shouldn't have thoughts and feelings of its own is deeply troubling, a product of casual old school sexism and ideals. Ginger and Sam's relationship is the toxic result of a specific male sense of entitlement and self-righteousness.
Scorsese is the only director who's ever known how to properly utilize Sharon Stone's strength. The role of the volatile and impulsive Ginger demands someone with a capacity for scenery-chewing, and Stone fucking devours every scene. She hits every emotional beat, high and low; she doesn't just own that character, she is that character. And there's something so alive and recognizable and electric about Ginger, whose choices are so self-destructive. Ginger vibrates at a frequency oblivious to regret, but those years of bad choices and all the regret she refuses to feel saturate Stone's performance from head to toe. I've never loved a performance so much from someone I typically don't enjoy.
Goodfellas, Casino and The Wolf of Wall Street form an informal trilogy of films, all of which are great, and all of which indict the actions and ideals of their male leads, who strive to conquer and consume, to take that giant piece of pie they believe they are owed like good, hot-blooded American males.
Scorsese would go on to eventually win Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for The Departed - a great film, obviously, but he's directed so many more that deserved recognition from the Academy over the years, including Casino. Scorsese's Oscar snubs became such a fixture of Oscar season that when Three 6 Mafia won the award for Best Song for Hustle and Flow at the 2006 ceremony, host Jon Stewart famously remarked, "Three 6 Mafia: One. Scorsese: Zero." Three 6 Mafia winning an Oscar before Scorsese is the ultimate punchline to the joke that is the Academy Awards. (And yet I still watch it annually with the sort of enthusiasm and rage typically reserved for sporting events.)
