‘Allegory for the times we live in': De Niro and Scorsese reunite for Casino at 30

The Guardian

a day ago

For this year's Tribeca film festival, the annual New York salute to moviemaking featured a special screening of Casino, the Martin Scorsese-directed drama starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone, timed to its 30th anniversary. But even though the splashy epic premiered in this same city back in November 1995, its themes of power, money, greed and ego are echoing in the modern ethos louder than ever.
'You can go back to the ancient Greek tragedies,' said Scorsese, speaking alongside De Niro and moderated by standup comedian W Kamau Bell on stage at the Beacon Theater before the screening. 'It's a basic story of hubris and pride, with the pride taking us all down.'
'[Joe Pesci's character] sort of takes nobody's input,' said Bell to De Niro. 'It's his ideas or the highway, and that ultimately leads to his destruction. It's almost an allegory for the times we live in. I don't know if you guys ever thought about that?'
'Yeah, a little bit,' De Niro snickered back to guffaws from the crowd. 'Do you have a couple hours?'
The release of Casino in the mid-90s, which focuses on the tragic exploits of the mafia that controlled Las Vegas and the excess that came with it, arrived at a time when that culture was on a downswing, with the decade seeing crusaders such as Rudy Giuliani bringing down organized crime one-by-one.
Zooming out, it also arrived smack in the middle of the Clinton administration, all making the characters in Casino seem like fringe figures. But judging by the constant drumbeat of headlines from the current American political climate, 2025 depicts a starkly different world, and with that a Casino for fresh eyes.
Even the style and culture of Vegas is entirely different. Or is it?
'Now you can bring the family!' said Scorsese of its cleaner reputation present-day, as opposed to the era when it was Sin City; a town where anything goes.
Still, Bell couldn't help but ask: 'Is Vegas better when it's run by the mafia, or is it better now when it's run by the corporations?'
'Is there a difference?' Scorsese smirked as the crowd roared. 'That's all I'm saying.'
'These days especially,' De Niro chimed in.
Adapted from the book by Nicholas Pileggi and based on the true events of Chicago transplant Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal, Casino was born during unique times in Scorsese's filmography. The director had just helmed the lush and quiet Age of Innocence, a subtle love story based on the Edith Wharton novel about 1870s New York. When Casino was released, audiences couldn't help but relate it to the film-maker's other story of mafia and hubris: Goodfellas, which came out five years beforehand and also starred De Niro and Pesci.
' It was compared, I would say, unfairly and lazily to Goodfellas, but in the 30 years since, I think it's grown up quite well,' said Bell. As the years have ticked by, the gap between the two films comparisons have widened, yet again allowing the viewer to watch Casino not thinking of it as a sort-of follow-up, but a standalone film.
'The idea was to take the last 15 minutes before [Ray Liotta's character] Henry Hill gets arrested in Goodfellas and make that one film,' Scorsese said of the memorably manic sequence during which we see Hill stretched thin with nerves frayed, edited together with a series of quick cuts and a pulsating soundtrack.
'In other words, take it even further and just go to the point where we can sustain that style, which really came from (the rhythm) of storytelling on a street corner. Some of the best actors we ever knew were the kids telling the stories on the street.'
As a result, the director and actor spoke about weeks of night shoots, loud casinos and the movie's intense violence (they had to tone down a scene when a man's eyes bulge out after his head is put in a vice). Scorsese also recalled trying to finagle having Rosenthal visit the set while the mobster was listed in the state's Black Book; a persona non grata in Nevada. The director went as far as working with former MPAA president Jack Valenti to use his vast connections at the time to lift the ban.
'Jack called me and he said: 'Martin, I've never had so many doors closing my face so fast in my life,'' impersonating Valenti's Texas drawl. 'This man is a member of the ma-fia.'
De Niro was reliably quieter while Scorsese discussed the film, a hallmark of their relationship. When asked about his memorable wardrobe in the film; his flashy suits a trademark of the character, De Niro said an archive of his costumes are stored at the University of Texas at Austin.
'I was collecting all of this stuff for years and it started getting expensive,' said De Niro, who realized that after he filmed Scorsese's musical New York, New York, all of his wardrobe was being pilfered and he realized he should preserve them 'When I was getting fitted for my shoes for Godfather II, I think they were the shoes Warren Beatty wore in Bonnie and Clyde.'
When asked about advice to the young film-makers in the audience, De Niro offered rallying words. ' I just say follow through on what you want to do. It might not be easy, but the only person you have is yourself to keep going. You just gotta keep doing it and believing in yourself. God helps those who help themselves.'
Scorsese echoed those sentiments, noting it's never easy when it comes to the craft, even at his high level '[People will say:] 'Oh, you have money and everything working for you' and that's never really the case. Often if you get a bigger budget, it's worse in terms of the production. The more money, the more risk and therefore the pressure is on to take less chances aesthetically and artistically.'
'One thing [the director] Arthur Penn told me when I was a young film-maker was: 'Remember, don't lose your amateur status.' He was right. You struggle feeling like an amateur, but it's amator, in Latin, which means love. That's the thing you gotta hold on to.'
However, Scorsese left the audience with this: ' The time is now to take advantage of whatever you can say,' said Scorsese. 'Who knows what's gonna happen. You have to really utilize what supposedly is called free speech.'