Nearly 40 years after its release, one of Martin Scorsese’s greatest movies remains a gold standard of crime films.

In 1972, legendary Hollywood director Francis Ford Coppola set a new bar for gangster and crime films with the release of The Godfather , featuring a star-studded cast of Marlon Brando, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Al Pacino, and Richard Castellano. Based on Mario Puzo’s 1969 novel, the movie won three Oscars at the 45th Academy Awards.

Eighteen years later, Scorsese added his own film to the upper echelon of gangster movies with the release of Goodfellas . Like The Godfather , Goodfellas was based on a novel, Nicholas Pileggi’s Wiseguy .…