“But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.” Raymond Chandler
In a lot of ways, this year’s Oscar races are mixed bags. While I have to say that I pretty much love the crop of nominees, its also a little disheartening to know that of all the major races, 90% of them are pretty much locks. Forest Whitaker and Helen Mirren are so far ahead in their races that it’s not even funny. Eddie Murphy and Jennifer Hudson are probably each looking in the mirror every day practicing their speeches. The Best Picture race has a clear favorite in Babel, and my hope for an upset seems to dwindle every day.
Honestly, the only reason I’m watching the show this year boils down to two words; Martin Scorsese. After watching one of America’s top two living directors get turned away year after year, I think this will finally be the time that the man who brought us Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, and The Aviator gets his Oscar for Best Director. Lord knows he’s deserved it.
For me personally, I’ve been watching Scorsese pictures since I was a junior in High School. Unlike some of his contemporaries, such as Steven Spielberg, Scorsese’s pictures were of such mature subject matter that I didn’t grow up with his movies. Frankly, as a child I wouldn’t have understood them anyway, but as a young man in high school in the mid-90’s Crime Epics became an obsession. With films like Pulp Fiction, Heat, and The Usual Suspects peaking my interest in the genre, I was of course lead to the classics such as The Godfather and The Godfather, Part II. Just as I’m sure was the case with many in my generation, Goodfellas was my introduction to Martin Scorsese’s underworld.
Years later, Scorsese is still one of my favorite directors. I’ve gone back to discover his past masterpieces, and eagerly await his new ones when they hit theaters. Of course, nothing will probably ever match that experience of watching Goodfellas for the first time, but it was especially nice to watch The Departed this past year, witnessing Scorsese’s triumphant return to the genre in which he is the absolute king. Once again he proved his gangland tales have a voice of authenticity that no other film maker has ever been able to reproduce, and to tell you the truth, no one probably ever will again.
So it is with this preface that I’m a bit ashamed that it wasn’t until recently that I finally caught up with the director’s first major foray into the genre; Mean Streets. After watching his other epics, I was taken aback a bit by the intimacy of the picture, but still captivated by its energy and style. For a low budget film, the movie has more creativity in its opening moments and tells you more about its characters and creators, than many other films will in their entire running time. Mean Streets may not be the pinnacle of the man’s career, but for many other directors it would have been.
Mean Streets Starring Harvey Keitel, Robert De Niro, David Proval, Amy Robinson, Richard Romanus, and Cesare Danova. Directed by Martin Scosese
A man lies in bed. In his head he hears a voice that wakes him. It says “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.” The man gets up looks at his face in the mirror for a bit, and then goes back to bed. These images give way to grainy footage of home movies as the Ronnettes’ Be My Baby plays its happy tune.
Now when talking about a Martin Scorsese picture, you’ll often hear words like “brilliant” and “genius”, and to be honest it’s difficult to describe these opening moments of Mean Streets in any other way. Filled with guilt and an abundance of sentimentality, in these first few minutes we know just about everything we need to know going in about this film’s main character and even some about the movie’s creator. The home movies we’re watching may just have the actor’s that star in this movie, but to some degree this entire film is meant to be a home movie from Scorsese’s own life.
The man we see is Charlie (Harvey Keitel), the film’s main character, but the voice he hears in his own head is actually Scorsese’s. Never before have I seen a technique where a director has been able to get across that the man on screen is indeed his alter ego. By making the character’s inner thoughts his own, Scorsese shows that the movie you’re about to see is a window into his own life before he was one of the most influential film makers of all time. Adding to this, Charlie is such a rich character that we can imagine what his life must have been like. He’s full of guilt as he confesses his sins to a priest about the life style he’s chosen or at least grown up with. He burns his hands with an open flame, trying to appease his conscience for the evil he does.
Thing is, Charlie never really seems that evil. He runs a protection racket for his powerful Uncle, but he never seems to really get anywhere. The biggest score you see in the movie is when Charlie and his friends rip off some kids looking to get high, but they only end up making $20 out of, and then just blow it going to see The Searchers. He seems to actually be quite content with his life, except with a few areas.
Keitel is so good here, that it makes me wonder why Scorsese instead went with De Niro as his leading man from then on. I’ve never seen the actor so charismatic and with so much apparent innocence. Now it’s tough to not associate the actor with roles such as each of his Tarantino bad-asses. There’s a naivety, innocence, and vulnerability here that I haven’t seen in Keitel in a long time, and may never see again. I love the energy he brings to every scene he’s in, from simply walking on screen in a slick suit to rumbling with a pool hall full of guys.
Charlie’s biggest problem is his relationship with “Johnny Boy” Civello (Robert De Niro).
Taking the role that you would usually associate with Joe Pesci in these movies as the “loose cannon” of Mean Streets, his introduction has him walking away from a mail box as it explodes. Johnny owes money all over town and tries desperately to be a big shot while blowing off work as much as possible. He drinks heavily and insults people he really shouldn’t, while shooting out the windows of the apartments of innocent people. Scorsese handles this relationship masterfully, making you understand Charlie’s complete loyalty to Johnny without saying a word as to why, while still letting us know this will bring inevitable disaster.
The rest of the film is simply about creating the 1970’s time period in New York’s Little Italy as realistically and faithfully as possible. Everything from bar fronts to even the tan lines on Charlie’s lover, Teresa (Amy Robinson), feels just right. This is even more incredible considering much of the picture was actually shot in Los Angeles, with inserts showing outdoor locations in NYC. This is pretty much flawlessly done, as Mean Street ends up perhaps the quintessential movie about this location and time period.
To solidify this movie’s reputation even further is to talk about the movie’s other important character; the camera. This impartial observer is everywhere, seeing all that goes on, whether it’s the film’s outbreaks of violence or Charlie’s moments of quiet reflection. A tracking shot at the beginning, focusing on a bar full of gangsters bathed in red light, seems like a warm up to the amazing run down of characters in Goodfellas, and shows this director’s in complete control. The aforementioned pool hall fight shows him to be a virtuoso with the camera, as its frenzied frame scans a room full of brawlers in one of the most spontaneous looking fights ever caught on screen.
This is also where Scorsese started to dip into his own record collection, which provides the film’s soundtrack. So not only is this man one of the most brilliant film makers to ever live, he’s also a world class music lover, able to bring just the right emotion from perfect song selections. The only thing really missing is The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter which would be a fixture of his other epics and is perhaps the song that is most associated with Scorsese because of it.
After seeing Mean Streets, there’s a piece of a cinematic puzzle that is now filled in. While Scorsese’s journey to The Departed will hopefully lead to the Oscar gold he has deserved for so long, the journey began with Charlie and Johnny Boy and the inner monologue of a brilliant director now seeing parts of his own life caught on film. Mean Streets is a seminal Crime film that deserves its classic status and will hopefully keep opening the door into Scorsese’s mind for years to come.
filmstarts.de, impawards.com, cinecultist.com
