Film Notes: Casino (1995)

Casino (1995), a love story, begins with Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro) in white pants leaving a building that looks very much like a colonial-style house. He’s dressed like the ace of hearts: red suit jacket, shirt, and tie. He tells us, “When you love someone, you’ve got to trust them. There’s no other way. You’ve got to give them the key to everything that’s yours. Otherwise, what’s the point?” Casino is a story told in reverse, like A Tale of Two Cities, only it’s one city – Las Vegas – narrated by two characters, each with his own version, like over a cup of coffee, the audience listening to both as they fill in the blanks. What is similar is their remorse. 

And what causes more remorse than losing money, love, or friendship? Casino opens in 1983, when the median family income in America was $24k, and the Billboard No. 1 Hit Single was The Police’s “Every Breath You Take”. Money and surveillance, capital and control: Casino is a cautionary tale of betting big on a life outside of the law, of thinking that if love costs money, then love can be bought. Enter Ginger (Sharon Stone), a Lady Godiva. She knows that to win in a casino is to live in what Ace calls, “Kickback City”: No one is winning on their own; it’s a network to which you must belong. “What a move. I fell in love right there.” Ace watches Ginger as she walks across the casino floor, her white sequined dress catching the light, her eyes catching his. As a montage of Ginger in Vegas plays, Ace continues: “But in Vegas, for a girl like Ginger, love costs money. Ginger’s mission in life was money. She was a queen around the casino. She brought in high rollers and helped them spread around a lot of money. Who didn’t want Ginger? She was one of the best-known, best-liked, and most respected hustlers in town.” Ginger under a casino marquee, in different beaded dresses, handing cash to a valet, pills to a gambler, chips to a teller. “Ginger had the hustler’s code. She knew how to take care of people, and that’s what Vegas is all about.” 

Ace might get Ginger’s floor game, but he doesn’t understand that getting her to marry him doesn’t mean that he’ll get a wife instead of a hustler. She’s honest with him: “I’m not in love with you,” she tells him. “You’ve got the wrong girl.” But Ace is such a strong believer in himself; he tells her how she’ll learn to love him. He buys her a million dollars’ worth of jewelry that they keep together in a safe at the bank. 

Casino is a story of transactions, of owing and being owned. “Before I ever ran a casino, or got myself blown up, Ace Rothstein was a hell of a handicapper, I can tell you that.” He lights a cigarette, wearing a grey metallic suit. He’s in his casino, looking around, remembering who gave him what in order for him to be standing there, retelling: “I was so good that whenever I bet I could change the odds for every bookmaker in the country. I’m serious. I had it down so cold that I was given paradise on earth. I was given one of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas to run – the Tangiers – by the only kind of guys that can actually get you that kind of money.” Enter the Mafia. A table of men sit in front of wine and fruit. A lamp hangs above, casting light like a halo around their heads, the rest of the frame in deep shadow. The room they are in could be in any house. They look directly at the camera. There are two empty chairs, ready to be filled or just newly relinquished. 

Casino is a two-man job: two ideas of how things went awry, two roads leading away from the Goldena Medina. Ace’s best friend Nicky Santoro (Joe Pesci) pipes up, “Matter of fact, nobody knew all the details, but it should have been perfect. I mean he had me – Nicky Santoro, his best friend – watching his ass, and he had Ginger, the woman he loved on his arm. But in the end, we fucked it all up, It should’ve been so sweet too. But it turned out to be the last time that street guys like us were ever given anything that fuckin’ valuable again.” Where Nicky spots compadreship, Ace leaves it out. Ace didn’t want it to be the three of them; he wanted Vegas and Ginger for himself.

A watched pot never boils. The way that Ace loves Ginger is like the way he counts his money. He knows she’s never going to be faithful the way he knows all the ways in which the money in his casino gets pocketed above and below the tables. He keeps his eye on Ginger, on her whereabouts and holdings, on her phone calls and what’s in her cup. She grows restless; she wants out. The Mafia men and the crooked politicians want their money to keep on coming.

Animals can feel fear, but humans can feel dread. We can ask, how will it all end? Ace and Nicky as narrators see it all so clearly – their celebrations, their missteps – while we see the story unfolding. Because Casino opens with Ace being blown up, we know this will be a story of violence, like sitting down with a deck of cards: Who’ll walk away a loser, and who’ll hold the hand that keeps them betting.

In Casino, outside of Vegas it’s all desert. The desert is where the dead are buried, not in graves that can be visited, but in holes dug in the ground by Mafia men wearing Sunday suits. Everyone in Casino knows about the desert; the lights on the casino marquees are fueled by what happens under the stars beyond the city limits.