Violence as Language in 'Goodfellas'

I fell in love with GoodFellas when Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) repeatedly hit a man in the face with a pistol.
Henry has just driven home his girlfriend, Karen (Lorraine Bracco) after a neighbor of hers left her on the side of the road when she refused his insistent sexual advances. The camera takes in the scene in one shot. It watches as Henry crosses the street with lethal purpose in his stride, then it turns to view the cocksure stance of Henry's quarry, the offending neighbor. When the two collide the neighbor fires out a quick threat with suitable assurance in his voice, "What do you want, fucko, you want somethin', eh?" Henry - not even seeming to notice his opponent's words, - grabs the neighbor by the hair and proceeds to smash his snub-nosed revolver into the man's face a staggering ten times.
Then Henry threatens him.
Martin Scorsese has created in this scene an abbreviated version of the entire message of his film.
Goodfellas is not so much a narrative as it is a character study of the mob. We are not shown single people doing single things; we are shown characters interacting with many characters and the way in which these actions echo throughout the world and life of the mob. For us as viewers, this creates a full and real sense of the mob as its own separate society. A society where violence takes the place of argument, and the only way to mask your fear of those around you is through respect and devotion.
In truth, it might be said that those in the movie feel the fear but do not know it as such, they believe it really is respect and devotion.
Take, for instance, Henry's wife Karen. Karen witnesses the entirety of Henry's attack on her neighbor, and is even asked by Henry to hide the gun he used to beat the man. In voice over we hear Karen's thoughts as he looks at the bloody pistol in her hands: "I know there are women like my best friend who would have gotten out of there the minute their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I didn't. I gotta admit the truth: it turned me on." She then hides the gun in a box next to a glass milk bottle, which segues perfectly into the next scene when a wine glass is folded in linen and crushed. They are married.
Karen is seduced by the casual violence her boyfriend shows, his lack of concern for normal society when dealing with her attacker. In the same way, Henry as a young boy is seduced by the way the mobsters operate, their shirking of the rules, their ease of dominance. The way people pay them respect because shootings and beatings take the place of threats and promises.
Scorsese's theme of violence as language is achieved on a very subtle level, avoiding long exposition and showmanship in favor of style. There is no fabricated moral center who explains the corruption of the world to us, only the camera watching every event with equal intimacy and care. Violence in Goodfellas is captured with the same photographic personality as conversations in a coffee shop. Music never augments the act, but rather the casual nature of the act.
The jukebox music in the scene in which Tommy (Joe Pesci) and Jimmy (Robert DeNiro) assault a man in the bar is a simple tune, a catchy number that would have been heard in a bar in the time period. The music remains, unaltered by the violence, as unflappable as the characters. There is no reason to treat violence in the film differently stylistically from conversation because to the characters it is no difference. Murder is an argument you win.
In this way Joe Pesci creates perhaps the greatest orator of violence in the mob in his character Tommy. Nearly every scene he is in is punctuated by an act of violence. Tommy approaches physical brutality not as a man acquainted with language, but as someone in love with the sound of his own voice. He shoots a man in the foot for not bringing him a drink, smashes a bottle against a man's head for asking him to pay his bill. If he hadn't joined the mob he'd have been a serial killer.
This is, of course, not to forget the technical and theatrical virtues of the film. The acting, editing, long-takes, and the use of music is all top-notch. But the true allure of this movie is how all of these things gather together to create a convincing collage which our minds can piece into a convincing portrait of a world most of us will never know.
Scorsese wields cinema so expertly and confidently that when he hits me with image after image of violence and immorality, I become the victim, the witness, and the perpetrator. I feel shocked, awed, and intoxicated by it all.