'If You Had Any Heart, You'd Be Stealing For a Living'

On Sharon Stone in Casino, Martin Scorsese, and Disappointment

I’ve spent more time than is reasonable defending one of the most recognisable and celebrated filmmakers in the world. I know how absurd that is, of course. The job of the film critic is generally to avoid this kind of emotionalism around directors. But Martin Scorsese has always been a filmmaker very close to my heart. As an artist, a teacher, and a human being, he holds a pivotal place in my film education, and his tireless passion for film history and preservation underlines why so many people regard him highly. I tend to feel that even his worst movies (Gangs of New York, don't @ me) still have a level of craft that puts them head and shoulders above most other filmmakers’ work.

To elaborate: I wrote my 15k word dissertation about him. I cry when I watch his documentaries about film, especially his Letters To Elia, so moving is his love for the artform. I know his fast-talking voice from two rooms away when he’s on TV, and he has a commentary on about half of the DVDs I own. I don’t mind hearing the same anecdotes twice, usually about his watching Raoul Walsh pictures as a youth, or the Italian Neo-Realists making his immigrant grandparents weep for the images of their ruined homeland. I didn’t have any relatives or older siblings who ‘got’ me into cinema. I had Scorsese.

This is probably why I also find myself reacting angrily, in spite of myself, when the same old media eruption periodically happens around Scorsese and his work. At this point, it’s pretty predictable. It usually goes like this: someone online pillories this almost universally-beloved filmmaker for only making ‘bro’ movies, or some cretin says that women don’t ‘get’ Scorsese’s work, or worse, that women who do are somehow in the wrong, because: the patriarchy, or something. It’s such an inaccurate read that it’s silly, but it gets me every time. (Side note: Glenn Kenny’s excellent new book Made Men does a wonderful job of categorically dispelling this stuff.)

Scorsese’s films aren’t just about men - they’re about manhood. Throughout his career, from Who’s that Knocking at My Door (1967) straight through to The Irishman, he has levelled an unsparing eye on the confines and vulnerabilities of masculinity, on the wounds men inflict on those around them, on their violence and their tenderness. And there’s more beyond, too. There’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), a second-wave feminist road trip film about a housewife’s struggle toward independence; The Age of Innocence (1993), whose intricate world of female-dominated social ritual is as brutal and elaborate as any gangsters’; the unforgettably brassy Lorraine Bracco as Karen Hill in Goodfellas, her voiceover - and therefore her perspective - running in parallel to her husband’s throughout the film. It does an enormous disservice to Scorsese’s work to reduce it to gender essentialism.

And yet, all of this is building up to say one thing - a resounding statement that may surprise you as much as it surprised me.

Last week, the unthinkable happened (I’m kidding, but barely): Scorsese disappointed me.

Jacket, Author’s Own.

I thought that I loved Casino. In all the many times I’ve seen it, even half-watched punctuated by commercials on television, I’ve been drawn in by the sheer exuberance of its filmmaking; Thelma Schoonmaker’s relentless editing, the veins-full-of-ice-water viciousness of its characters, the mile-a-minute voiceover describing the internecine workings of Las Vegas. When it was released in 1995, some critics felt that it was simply a louder, bigger, longer Goodfellas; I don’t think I ever really saw that as a problem. I enjoy everything dialed up and tacky about it; the manicured costumes most of all. No one - even De Niro - wears those costumes better than Sharon Stone as Ginger, a whirling dervish in sequins and furs. Fittingly, $1 million was spent on the film’s costuming budget alone.

For those who aren’t already familiar, Casino is, like Goodfellas, based on a work of nonfiction by journalist Nicolas Pileggi, who captured the last gasp of Vegas when it was a mobster’s kingdom and not Disney World for grownups. The story features a trio of vivid real-life characters; mainly, ‘Lefty’ Rosenthal, a Jewish bookmaker who was brought in by the mafia in the sixties to run their casino with an iron fist. In the film, he’s called ‘Ace’ Rothstein in the film and played by Robert De Niro. His muscle came in the form of Anthony Spilotro, called Nicky Santoro in the movie and played by a wild-eyed Joe Pesci. (If you think Pesci’s performance is a tad unhinged, it’s worth recalling that in real life, Spilotro’s arrival single-handedly brought Vegas’ murder rate up by 70%.) Finally, there was Geri McGee, the ex-call girl and model who married up in the form of ‘Lefty’ and would eventually court her own ruin through addiction and adultery, winding up dead by overdose under mysterious circumstances aged only 46.

Casino combines the extravagance and ugly venality of Goodfellas (1990) before it and the Wolf of Wall Street (2013) after it. Narratively, each of these films follow a particular pattern - one where a downfall is precipitated by avarice and human frailty. For Henry Hill, for Ace Rothstein, and for Jordan Belfort, their conclusions are not James Cagney-style blazes of glory. They return to the ordinary, cursed by the banality of regular life. There’s spiritual degradation and material loss, but rarely lessons learned or redemption found. The final result of all their efforts is a sad sort of shrug; a big nothing.

In each of those films, there is also a female counterpoint to these men. Henry Hill has Karen, who furnishes him with a loyalty that he never really returns; Jordan Belfort has Margot Robbie’s Naomi, a trophy wife who knows loyalty was never really a part of the bargain. But Sharon Stone’s Ginger is something else, something darker. She is compelled only by an empty maw of discomfort, a gnawing unhappiness. Even when she is installed resident trophy wife of Vegas with the floor-length golden gown to match, and $1 million worth of secret insurance jewellery in a box, she is unable to keep from climbing down from the pedestal Ace has built for her.

We first see Ginger as a ‘chip girl’ - a hustler who sexually connives her way into unsuspecting gamblers’ pockets - on the Tangiers casino floor. She is gleefully throwing her uncooperative target’s chips in the air as people go careening to the floor to grab them, and flashing a sideways smile at Ace (De Niro). With her bouncy, barbie-blond hair and shimmery cream minidress, she seems luminous. Sharon Stone is remarkable in the role, all fluttery-eyed womanly charm, combined with the barroom knowingness of cinema’s million and one world-weary dames. We begin the film thinking that she may be good-bad, but she ain’t evil (in the wise words of the Shangri-Las, or Johnny Thunders, or whichever version of that song you prefer.)

When Ace first proposes marriage, Ginger refuses, insisting that she doesn’t love Ace in that way. He pushes the point, needing her among his beautiful possessions, ignoring ‘the stories’ he admits he has heard and guaranteeing her financial safety. It sweetens the deal for Ginger: how can an ex-prostitute say no? For Ace, who is a scrupulous, coldly clever gambler, Ginger remains his biggest and most dangerous bet, and he can’t say she doesn’t warn him.

The ‘baggage’ that Ginger comes with arrives early in the marriage: her sleazebag ex-pimp Lester Diamond (a stunningly well-cast James Woods). He sweet-talks her on the phone, mentioning that when he first saw her she was a ‘little colt’ at ‘fourteen years old’. Ginger’s only strongly-felt emotion seems to derive from her interaction with Lester, who has been manipulating and evidently abusing her since childhood. He’s her weakness, and when Ace’s bodyguards beat him up, it’s the catalyst for Ginger to become a truly mutinous wife. This sad power dynamic is so well performed as to feel genuinely uncomfortable to watch, especially knowing that Ginger, after a life of sex work, has been programmed to respond to her pimp in very particular ways.

And yet, in spite of a backstory we should be able to empathise with, Ginger continually lowers the bar for wife and motherhood. She sinks into addiction, lends her husband’s money to Lester, eventually kidnaps her own daughter in a custody battle, plots to have Ace killed, and sleeps with his associate and friend Nicky. It’s like the film can’t stop amping up her behaviour, maybe in accordance with her addictive spiral, but nonetheless, it risks overdoing its point: if we didn’t think she was evil before, we certainly do now.

‘Once a hooker, always a hooker,’ Ace spits at her late in the film. It’s a cruel remark, but it serves a double meaning. On the surface, yes: Ginger’s primary currency is her beauty and sexuality, and she’s gone so far on it that she’ll never stop seeing it as her main commodity. More than once, the different men in her life shame her for her boozing and drugging with variations on the comment that she’ll ‘lose her looks’. They never see past her appearance as her sole defining and worthwhile trait, and it’s a credit to Scorsese that he subtly notes this by having both Ace and Nicky repeat it. In exchange, Ginger may well be unable to see men on any other terms than what they can do for her. Yet again, I find myself frustrated by this. With all of these small nods toward Ginger’s damaged past and her victimisation, she is still far and away the least sympathetic character in the film. And this is a film in which someone pops a guy’s eyeball out in a vise.

As the story goes, test audiences who first watched Casino responded with vocal horror to certain scenes in the film. But it wasn’t to any sequences of unspeakable physical violence; it was the scene in which Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone have an affair. Their dual betrayal of De Niro seems to be what evoked the strongest reaction in an audience, and if that doesn’t say something about where sympathy is most likely to lie, I don’t know what to tell you.

If Scorsese were a lesser filmmaker, his depiction of the classically unknowable, man-eating femme fatale - an archetype direct from movie history rather than any discernable reality - would probably be a bit easier to digest. You could excuse it by saying Ginger is simply a bad woman, and of course, bad women exist, most especially in the case of Geri McGee, the actual person Ginger is based on. For his part, the ‘real’ Ace Rothstein - Lefty Rosenthal - demurred when he was asked if Casino’s depiction of his wife was an accurate one. ‘I really wouldn’t want to get into that area. It’s an area that is distasteful and brings back bad memories. I wouldn’t be willing to dispute [...] but I certainly wouldn’t confirm it.’

The ‘real’ Ginger and Ace, Geri McGee and Lefty Rosenthal

For Scorsese, a master of invoking mixed audience feelings about otherwise deeply unpleasant characters, Ginger is a bit of a let-down. She is so tantalisingly close to being a real, live, bourbon-guzzling woman, written convincingly and played with such verve and full-throated energy by Sharon Stone. Stone was nominated for an Academy Award for her efforts. But the disappointment lies, for me, in the threads of her story that Scorsese picks up and puts back down. There’s a breadcrumb trail of possible sympathies or interiority that might allow an audience to see Stone’s character as more than a conniving, out-of-control bitch. But by the time she has tied her young daughter to her bed to go out for a few casual drinks, her evil seems complete. Even the most keen revisionist might struggle to find a sympathetic angle to such shrill desperation. And so, finally, Ginger runs off and is found dead of an overdose. Our last vision is of her looking like the living dead, clinging to a hotel wall in an oblivious fog: it feels like the comeuppance of an old film noir dame.

Many of Scorsese’s characters are monsters. Part of his great talent has always been in making them darkly likeable, or incidentally funny, or possessed of enough curious magnetism to keep an audience mired in moral confusion. Enjoyable as Casino is, I find so much more to mine in other iterations of the Scorsese woman. For the ill-fated Ginger, there’s too little humanity afforded to her. Casino is - much as I hate to say it - a little bit less of a film for it.

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