Strange Visual Effect in Goodfellas

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8:32

Jimmy and Henry are sitting at a table. There's a scene out the window behind them. The scene gets magnified slowly over time as they talk, as though it's a slowly zooming camera. What's going on? Am I imagining it? Is it the change in the camera angle or something?

Ok, I see it was intentional.

In the end, Henry meets one last time in the window booth at the diner to talk about his options with Jimmy. [An innovative camera technique brilliantly illustrates Henry's claustrophobic fear and paranoia. A smash-zoom gives the illusionary effect of the background outside the diner closing in on the foreground inside the diner. This effect was famously used in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958), and in Spielberg's Jaws (1975).]

http://www.filmsite.org/goodf3.html

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Ok, I see it was intentional.

In the end, Henry meets one last time in the window booth at the diner to talk about his options with Jimmy. [An innovative camera technique brilliantly illustrates Henry's claustrophobic fear and paranoia. A smash-zoom gives the illusionary effect of the background outside the diner closing in on the foreground ins Vertigo (1958), and in Spielberg's Jaws (1975).]

http://www.filmsite.org/goodf3.html