Mean Streets [DVD] [1973]

It is the stark realities, the slim budget and the improvisational work and looseness of the plot that makes 'Mean Streets' so shockingly real in tone and much more aggressive and emotional than 'Goodfellas' or 'The Godfather'. The characters are amongst the most evocative and human ever committed to film, they are like real people summoned up from the lives of the director and the actors.

Harvey Keitel is brilliant as Charlie, a young man with power and respect in his neighbourhood, yet also privately troubled by his faith and his conflicting compassionate nature which involves loving his epileptic girlfriend his uncle has forbidden him to see and supporting and helping her irredemable and troublesome cousin Johnny Boy.

De Niro plays Johnny Boy to perfection: laughing, jeering and fighting, really a young man in desperate need of support (which Charlie offers) but ultimately remains the insensitive idiot fool that leads to his downfall. Johnny Boy is the central focus of 'Mean streets', and he is so tempestuous and troubled and so naive and a fabulously watchable character.

It is said 'Mean Streets' lacks a tangible plot but I don't view this as a criticism. The film is an intimate painting of troubled city life that explores a number of very powerful themes in its 2 hrs. What does exist of the plot is a very simple story of unpaid debts and eventual violence, but the setting, the charcters dilemmas and the relationships between the charcaters is what makes the film so fantastically gritty and dangerously real and disturbing. There is vast space for Scorsese to throw in witty, humorous dialogue, extreme character development scenes, a vast music score (alternating between popular music of the time and Italian operetta style) and extreme violence and obscenely good camera work.

'Mean streets' is a college of beautiful scenes and characters, it is violent, touching and funny. The best scene is the improvised piece between Johnny Boy (De Niro) and Charlie (Keitel) five or ten minutes in when they discuss Johnny Boy's debts. Ten times more powerful than the disappointing 'Goodfellas' and 'Raging Bull's' earlier equal. However, I would suggest watching 'Raging Bull', 'Goodfellas' or 'Taxi Driver' to summon up the mainstream essence of Scorsese and De Niro's work before watching this more underground and different film.

The main characters are established in the opening, there's Tony, the bar-owner, Michael, the gangster, Johnny-Boy, the debt-ridden vandal, and Charlie, a guilt-ridden small time hood. The plot revolves around these four characters. Tony's bar (bathed in red, hellish, lustful light) is the local hangout. Johnny Boy owes money to Michael, whose patience is running out. Charlie is a man that feels guilty, struggling against his Catholic upbringing. In church, he admits that after confession, the Ten Hail Mary's and Ten Our Father's do nothing for him, they don't take away his guilt. He needs another form of pennance. We often see him holding his finger over a flame, or his hand over a fire. Charlie takes Jonnhy Boy under his wing, intending to help him out and set him straight. Johnny Boy is his pennance.

Harvey Keitel plays Charlie with great power, capturing his almost innocent ways in his baby-like face. His constant smiling and good humour show his good-natured character (even in a pool-hall brawl, Charlie refuses to fight by claiming he has a bad hand). De Niro is ferocious as the venemous Jonnyy Boy, a bum who can't and won't pay his debts, and passes the time by vandalising and shooting at things. After making 'Boxcar Bertha' for Roger Corman, Scorsese was told to go and make something more personal, something he knows about. Scorsese was brought up in New York, and 'Mean Streets' is apparently based loosely on events that he witnessed. It is also a very personal movie to Scorsese, symbolised in the opening credits, which are screened on a movie camera, and shot like a home-movie. Released in 1973, 'Mean Streets' can be called Scorsese's 'real' first movie, a realistic look at gangster life in New York, ridden with violent characters, great plot, amazing script and direction. It's a great gangster movie, and established a technique that is often imitated. 'Mean Streets' is echoed in many movies, especially all the small-time-hood/street-life.

This is not Martin Scorsese's greatest movie, but it's an important one. Scorsese has gone on to make many classic movies, some of the greatest of all time ('Taxi Driver', and his masterpiece, 'Raging Bull')... but even those movies, and others such as 'Goodfellas' and 'Casino', all owe something to 'Mean Streets', and that's just one fo the reasons to love it.