Forget The Godfather’s horse’s head in the bed, or the pistol behind the cistern. Forget mob bosses getting whacked to "House of the Rising Sun" in Casino, or Robert De Niro’s Al Capone delivering an ode to baseball in The Untouchables. Forget, even, the FBI agents discussing the meaning of ‘fuggedaboutit in Donny Brasco. If you're looking for an iconic mafia movie scene, one that encapsulates everything that is great about the genre and why we love it, none holds a candle – or, for that matter, a razor blade – to Goodfella’s prison dinner scene.
On the off chance the scene isn’t etched in your memory, let’s recap. About halfway through
the 1995 classic, our narrator Henry Hill is sentenced to ten years inside for various criminal
undertakings. No matter, though, because a number of his mob associates are also doing time,
and as Hill explains, they ‘own the joint’. They own it to such a degree, in fact, that they live
in separate quarters from the other inmates, dress in Adidas tracksuits and smuggle in everything from joints of beef to bottles of J&B scotch (as well as, apparently, the furnishings of a professional kitchen).
“In prison, dinner was always a big thing,” the late, great Ray Liotta explains in voice-over, while in
close-up, we watch the (also) late, great Paul Sorvino delicately slices a bulb of garlic with a razor blade (it may be disputed as an actual cooking method, but food prep has never looked cooler). The rest of the scene is almost as memorable: a pasta course, followed by a main (meat or fish is preferable), a tomato sauce with veal, beef and pork meatballs, and steaks cooked in pans (for lack of a broiler). There are lobsters on ice, fresh bread, peppers, salami and onions, and different types of cheeses. Red and white wine. Cigars and smoking jackets. A basil plant sits as the table centrepiece. It’s completely absurd and utterly mouthwatering; it's also a microcosm of cinematic mob life in which every ingredient of why we love the genre is present.
From The Godfather’s improvised “leave the gun, take the cannoli” line to The Sopranos crew’s
obsession with cured meats, Italian food has always played an integral role for our on-screen mobsters. For these men, eating represents heritage, family and a shared experience that ties them together. And just like the code of omertà that – in theory at least – helps keep them out of jail, food preparation is ritualistic and follows strict rules.
That’s why the razor blade is so memorable: it represents discipline, care and the correct way of doing things. “Paulie did the prep-work," Hill tells us, "and he had this wonderful system for doing the garlic. He used a razor. And he used to slice it so thin that it used to liquify in the pan with just a little oil. It’s a very good system.” Or to put it another way: it's a sign of respect.
There is a great contrast to the scene in Goodfella's final act when Hill unravels over the course of a manic, paranoid day in which he tries to not just offload stolen silencers, pick up his brother and cut some drugs but timing the preparation of an intricate family meal. Unlike Paulie, Hill isn't disciplined and doesn’t stick to the rules and it leads to his undoing (well, that and the helicopter).
The prisoners as a family unit are also important. These aren’t just guys who work together, they’re famiglia. While the other non-mob prisoners are doing time “all mixed together like pigs”, our Goodfellas live alone, together. They care about each other and express that through food. “How do you like your steak?” Johnny Dio asks Vinny (played by real-life New York restauranteur Frank Pellegrino Sr). “Medium rare, hmm. An aristocrat,” Dio muses. Elsewhere in Goodfellas, Paul Sorvino’s Paulie is shown cooking up the best-looking sausages ever committed to film.
But let’s not forget we’re dealing with killers here. Breaking bread and breaking balls are important, but so is breaking heads. This is the final reason the razor blade is a masterstroke of symbolism: it lends what is essentially a wholesome family dinner scene a vague undercurrent of menace. It's a tool which could just as easily be directed to someone’s throat, and we’re reminded that, even in jail, Paulie is the boss of the crew who has the power to end their lives in his hands.
The razor blade scene has spawned a hundred think pieces on garlic preparation: does slicing it with a razor really make a difference? Is slicing preferable to crushing or mincing? Is it possible for garlic to liquify? How long would it take? All questions fans of the film have contemplated in their own kitchens. Ultimately, the Goodfellas prison dinner scene isn’t just shorthand for mob movies themselves but one of the coolest moments in cinema history full stop. That's why, even 27 years later, we can never look at garlic the same way again.
