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Popular Culture Review
possibilities, in particular, the notion that Siegel’s gangsterism and Las Vegas
vision are not so much at odds with Hollywood but, rather, a further extension of
it (Benenson, James, Maslin). And the film’s awareness of Siegel’s Jewish
ethnicity that links him to the studio heads of the 30s and 40s (Vineburg) is
another important part of the Hollywood-Las Vegas complex it reveals.
However, Levinson’s attachment to the early beginnings of the Hollywood-Las
Vegas story seems part of a romantic optimism, or perhaps even nostalgia, about
its subject that films like Casino and Leaving Las Vegas reject.
Like Casino, Bugsy identifies itself and its love story as being based on
“real life.” In this case, it is the real life pursuit of the Hollywood starlet Virginia
Hill (Annette Bening) by the famous gangster Ben “Bugsy” Siegel (Warren
Beatty). The effect of simulation is apparent from the moment Ben first lays
eyes on Virginia at a movie set. Ben approaches her with the cliche gesture of
lighting her cigarette which she turns into some smart-talking repartee worthy of
any Hollywood movie with a suave mobster and his moll who gives as good as
she gets. It is, not too surprisingly, the woman Virginia who points out the
fabricated nature of this scene by telling Ben that talk in Hollywood comes
cheap, it’s called dialogue.
While this scene exposes Hollywood’s seductive fictions, the film
ultimately relies upon Hollywood celebrity and its mystique. For one thing, it
uses the real life love affair between Beatty and Bening to enhance (supposedly)
the historical love affair between Siegel and Hill. Reviewers were quick to
suggest the appropriateness of Beatty playing Siegel, a well-known ladies man,
as well as the movie’s use of the well-publicized relationship between Beatty
and Bening as part of its effort to recreate the glamorous “feel” of 1930s and 40s
Hollywood (James 22). But the charm of Beatty, Bening, and their relationship
(with the unavoidable speculation: is she the one?) undercuts the film’s ability to
explore the darker side of Bugsy and his strange desire to take Hollywood to Las
Vegas. Its glamorous and polished look stand in marked contrast with the garish
and gloomy appearance of Leaving Las Vegas and Casino, Bugsy's use of
history and its glossy appearance recalls Jameson’s notion of the nostalgia film
or, as he also refers to it, “the cult of the glossy image” (Signatures 85), which
designates film’s submersion into a pastiche whose reverential copying of the
past replaces historical awareness with a shallow and ephemeral sense of style.
In order to appreciate Bugsy's commitment to style, it is worth
comparing Hill’s character with that of Gringer in Casino. The two have
significant parallels, yet the different places where they are left take the two
films in different directions. In both movies, the women tie the love plot into the
business of the gangster plot because their lovers take the unusual step of
entrusting them with money crucial to their business and their lives. In Bugsy,
Hill’s response to this extraordinary trust—after a slight fall that only returns her
to Siegel, chastened, wiser, and more devoted—confirms their love as true, the