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" Every Wednesday we show you a great scene from film history you may remember, you may not \u2014 and then we break it down for you. Humor is seductive. The way a person can snap off a witty observation, the way they can tell a story, filigreeing its edges with amusing detail, can prove irresistible. The way that American crime dramas use humor illustrates this perfectly. Think of The Sopranos. Characters like Tony and Christopher are rather obviously funny, i.e., they exist not just to be laughed at, but to be admired for their quick turns of phrase and lightning-fast ability to undermine someone with a well-oiled insult. It&amp;#039;s part of what makes us like them, and part of what mitigates the more negative feelings we might normally harbor toward murderous philanderers.  Before The Sopranos, Martin Scorsese brilliantly illustrated this tension in Goodfellas. Part of what makes Scorsese&amp;#039;s film more effective than another masterpiece of the genre (like The Godfather) is that many of its characters are actually likable. It&amp;#039;s not just that they have their own in-house moral code that we can recognize and through which we can comprehend their behavior. It&amp;#039;s that, beyond all this, they&amp;#039;re flat-out appealing. Take Joe Pesci&amp;#039;s hot-head mobster, Tommy DeVito. After cracking up a table of career criminals with a violent anecdote, Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) tells him he&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;a funny guy.&amp;quot; The mood immediately drops. Tommy begins interrogating his friend about the comment. &amp;quot;Like a clown? Like I make you laugh? How am I funny?&amp;quot; Scorsese invites the viewer to enjoy his character&amp;#039;s good humor, then, on a dime, shifts to tense throat-in-the-chest anxiety \u2014 and back again. In one scene, Scorsese demonstrates how totally seductive a sharpened sense of humor can be, and how we so often use our appreciation of that quality to skate over the larger fissures in a character&amp;#039;s personality. Watch the scene below.      Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a24597/goodfellas-scene-0913/>