Mean Streets (1973)

Writer/director: Martin Scorcese

"You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it."

Mean Streets was considered to be Scorceses first industry film. Meaning big film. He had made one other full length film called "Who's That Knocking at my door" (AKA I Call First), which was made while in Film school in New York. That film also stared Harvey Keitel, and is in fact very similar to Mean streets. Mean Streets follows the life of Charlie, an up and comer in his local mob and his relationship to his neighborhood. Johnny Boy (Played by Robert De Niro) is Charlie's protege, and happens to be his girlfriends cousin. Johnny Boy however, is a bit of mess. He owes everyone in the neighborhood and never pays off his debt. This time however, Johnny has borrowed from Micheal, something of a big deal. *SPOILER ALERT* Well, as hard as Charlie tries, Johnny simply does not want to repay his debt, and pays for it. The narrative itself isn't exactly original when you boil it down to the bone. It's a story about someone who owes money, but doesn't have it. Or at least, that's the main plot. Beneath the surface, Mean Streets actually weaves a complex web of different themes, relationships and plots. Hang on folks, it's gonna be a long one.

Charlie as a character himself is an interesting case. To understand Charlie, you must in a sense understand the mentality behind the script. Scorsese's first feature film (I forgot to mention this earlier) is the story of Boxcar Bertha. If your unfamiliar with this colorful character of American folklore, she was a train hobo who robbed banks and gave the money to different unions. Now, before I say this I have to explain something: I love Scorcese, he is a legend and i have the utmost respect for his craft. Boxcar Bertha sucked. I mean really, it did, even Scorsese thought so. So he got some advice: Make something more personal. Scorcese did actually grow up in inner city New York, and did hang out with what he describes as "toughs" whether or not he was in a gang or not is unknown, but it's probable that he knew of people in them. So we have two sides to Scorcese: An artistic side (if you don't think Scorceses is Artistic, watch Who's That Knocking at my Door?) and a masculine or macho side. This duality between the feminized artistic side and masculine street side is made physically by a female companion. This is true both in Mean Streets and Who's That knocking at my door. Teresa is Charlie's girlfriend. He, however, doesn't tell anyone that he has a girlfriend. He keeps her secret. In fact, you almost get the sense that he is ashamed of her. This ties into another common theme in almost of all Scorceses work: Catholic guilt. The church is seen as a place of sanctuary, a haven free from the masculine world of proving oneself, and the feminized world of sensual creativity, while remaining masculine in a puritanical sense. When this protection is seen as fake, when Charlie finds out that a story a priest once told him was simply that, a story, he cannot reconcile that. "They're not supposed to be just guys" he says about priests. They were beyond being "guys". Catholicism is about that: striving for the impossible perfectibility (imitation of Christ) and beating yourself up for never quite getting there.

The film is all about balance. Charlie balances out his feminizied world with the masculine one, and these two polarized worlds with a supposedly middle one (church). But within these relationships the lines between masculine/feminine are blurred. In, what I think is the most telling point of the film, a particular scene Charlies shows a homo-social nature. Theresa is having a seizure (she is epileptic), Johnny storm away angrily (she's your girl he says). Charlie then leaves his suffering partner in the hands of a stranger old lady who lives in his building (actually, the old lady is Martin Scorceses's real life mother) to go to comfort Johnny. A dick move? Yes, almost literally. Am I suggesting that Scorcese put this in to add a homosexual quality to his character? No. However I do think it is telling, in light of the other themes and things going on in this film.

If you've seen or are familiar with the french new wave, you've be shocked on how much this movie takes from that movement. Only in the sense that, the plot kind of weaves in and out of relevancy. Characters go off on tangents, hanging out partying that don't forward the plot in a bare bones way but look at Charlie and his world more closely. The scene with the caged lion is a great example of this. The result is fascinating: You end up with a quite artsy film that looks and feels like a typically Hollywood narrative. This is when Scorcese balances that fine line so well, you hardly even notice it. Near the end of the film, the plot straightens itself out and finishes, but without the thematic wanderings, the ending would like any artistic meaning.

You will find yourself watching this movie and saying "wow...this dialogue is so cliche". While this is undoubtedly true today it certainly wasn't the case when this film came out. It was seen as an edgy, street-wise film that actually sounded like what everyone talks like. This is because Scorcese mostly invented the modern day cliches about New York Italian gangsters. And what's a cliche other than a badly copied classic? For indeed a lot of his films are classics, and although the dialogue is corny by today's standard, this only serves as a testament on how far dialogue and verbal representation has come in film. So, expect a lot of "what sa matter with you?" and "forgot about it" s. The music is sparse with not score, but songs from Scorcese's record collection at the time, which include a lot of roiling stones and other 60s-70s bands I know nothing about. It works well, making the movie feel hip and current at the time ( I think). The only other notable sound quality in this film is the voice-over work. The voice of Charlie in his head, his thoughts is not the voice of Harvey Keitel but of Scorcese. This wasn't done due to some technical error, but purposefully. A separation is made from the thoughts in Charlie's mind, to his words and actions. A separation of the physical, real world where one can hide or at least conceal your emotions, and the meta-physical or semi-real world of emotions, of inner strife.

This film contains the predecessor, practice run if you will, of the famous tracking shot in Goodfellas. It is itself a goody, although shorter than the Goodfellas one. A lot of of the hand held shots in this film were used because the film crew ran out of money for more tracks. This, I think, is a blessing in disguise as it gives the film a much more loose, on the verge of falling over feel to it. These slow, tracking shots are juxtaposed with jump cuts of items of people, rapid fire. The two styles together are an odd mix, and in his later work he doesn't use the jump cut as frequently. What is possibly my favorite scene in the party scene (with the returning solider). In it, there is a great shot with an attached camera on Harvey's face as he drunkenly stumbles in the bar. The effect is dizzying, so disorienting and sickening that you almost feel as if you are there. The progress of his facial expressions are perfect, the I'm really sick/depressed but trying to look happy face. The whole is shot with only rolling stones as backgrounds, as a consequence actually events in this sequence are blurred, forgotten or muted. What you see if the spurting style of a future master, and it's fantastic to watch.

Watch this film, espically if you've seen Goodfellas or even Raging Bull. I think you'll be surprised at the depth of it (although you shouldn't be). It's much more different from his later and much shittier works such as the Aviator or Casino. The words and dialogue may seem simple, but beneath the superficiality is this wealth of artistic meaning and pathos. Let it sink in.