R, 112m, 1973

Starring: Harvey Keitel (Charlie Cappa), Robert De Niro (John “Johnny Boy” Civello), Amy Robinson (Teresa Ronchelli), Cesare Danova (Giovanni Cappa), David Proval (Tony DeVienazo), Richard Romanus (Michael Longo), George Memmoli (Joey) and Martin Scorsese (Jimmy Shorts). Directed by Martin Scorsese. Produced by Jonathan T. Taplin. Screenplay by Martin Scorsese and Mardik Martin.

            As a film student at NYU, Scorsese intended to create an Italian American trilogy. The first was an aborted film that would have been called Jerusalem, Jerusalem. The second film would eventually become Who’s That Knocking at My Door? and the third film, which acts as a pseudo follow-up, to Who’s That Knocking at My Door?, is Mean Streets, originally called Season of the Witch. Both produced films were highly autobiographical with protagonists JR and Charlie as stand-ins for Scorsese. However, the idea was shelved, and Scorsese focused on directing Boxcar Bertha. Following a showing of Boxcar Bertha, director John Cassavetes advised Scorsese to direct something he wanted to do. Inspired by this constructive criticism, Scorsese revisited the Season of the Witch script, renaming it to Mean Streets, referencing Raymond Chandler’s essay “The Simple Art of Murder”.

            Mean Streets opens where Who’s That Knocking at My Door? leaves off, with a wayward main character; played by Harvey Keitel, seeking guidance in a church. Charlie summarizes where JR went wrong with the opening dialogue, “You don’t make up for your sins in the church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit, and you know it”. As a small-time loan collector for his uncle Giovanni’s (Cesare Danova) loan shark operation, Charlie’s sins are far graver than JR’s. Charlie’s spiritual morality often conflicts with his desire to serve his mafia boss uncle. The film follows the lives of Charlie and his three friends, Michael (Richard Romanus), Tony (David Proval), and Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro,) in Little Italy. Of his friends, Johnny Boy, with his zany self-destructive, devil-may-care attitude, gives Charlie the most trouble. The four friends roam the streets of Little Italy, often frequenting the movie theater and a restaurant owned by Giovanni, which Charlie wants to run someday. However, Johnny Boy’s increasingly erratic behavior, as well as a secret affair with Johnny Boy’s cousin, Teresa (Amy Robinson), threatens to undermine Charlie’s ambitions and respect in the neighborhood. As tensions rise between a debt owed between Michael and Johnny Boy, as well as being pressured by Giovanni, Charlie must choose where his loyalties truly lie.

            As a child living in Little Italy, Scorsese had to be taught the rules of the street to survive. One of these rules is the so-called boundaries of the block, which had the effect of leaving many who lived there in a state of psychic entrapment. So powerful was this mentality that save for one time when he went to a friend’s birthday party, a young Scorsese never ventured to the Greenwich Village, just a few streets away from his childhood home, until he was a student at NYU in the early 1960s. This is reflected in the film with the mob’s territory. Although the mob rules by night, they are confined to their domain, which often feels subterranean and claustrophobic. Although Charlie and his friends may act like Little Italy is their kingdom, it is also their mental prison. This is visually represented as a sinister and claustrophobic noir-esque enclosure. By utilizing noir-esque aesthetics with dimly lit narrow hallways, shadowy alleys, and dreary dwellings, Scorsese was able to visually represent the suffocating claustrophobia that threatens to choke the life out of its inhabitants. This gloomy den is ruled by the laws of the crime lords, so when Charlie continues to see Teresa, despite Giovanni forbidding him from seeing her, Charlie is breaking the rules of this world and is susceptible to punishment.

            Despite acting as a pseudo later day St. Francis of Assai for those around him, Charlie is forced to serve the mob even as he fears divine retribution for his sins. To atone for his many sins, Charlie holds his hand to an open flame, which symbolically invokes hellfire and damnation. Despite this being a recurring motif throughout the film, Charlie seems to fear the loss of his uncle’s approval over the vengeful wrath of God. These opposing ideologies cause an internal conflict in his Christian consciousness. As a result, Charlie is riddled with guilt, as he lacks the maliciousness to become a true gangster, while also lacking the strength to live a holy life. Charlie’s Catholic beliefs intensify his moral conflicts, fueling the film’s overall sense of looming destiny. This sense of foreboding destiny is expressed visually through film noir techniques of dark alleyways and slick reflective streets. According to Scorsese, Charlie cannot ultimately reconcile his religious beliefs with the society he finds himself in. In the end, Charlie’s desire to be a saint while still appeasing Giovanni ultimately seals the fate of Charlie, Johnny Boy, and Teresa. By putting off his responsibilities to his friends until things reach a boiling point, Charlie ends up not only damning his friends but himself as well. While trying to appease everyone, Charlie is liked, but he does little to defuse the escalating situation between Johnny Boy and Giovanni. The opening scene showcases Charlie in the way he wishes to be seen. The scene is shot using a handheld 8mm camera, giving the scene a cinéma vérité, documentary realism aesthetic. Charlie is seen posing and beaming with the neighborhood’s inhabitants, appearing as everyone’s friend in a friendly neighborhood. The scene is set to the rhythm of The Ronette’s “Be My Baby”, which encapsulates Charlie’s desire to be accepted and respected by those around him. This charade is best summed up by Johnny Boy in a later scene, “Everybody loves Charlie. Charlie loves everybody. Fucking politician.”. Similarly to JR, Charlie is meant to be an autobiographical stand-in for Scorsese. In this sense, they are Scorsese’s Antoine Doinel, a character that serves as an autobiographical stand-in for François Truffaut, who appears in four films and one short. The relationship between Charlie and Teresa is similar to JR and the Girl’s in Who’s That Knocking at My Door? After a tender moment between the two, Teresa asks Charlie why he never tells her he loves her. He replies, “With you, I can’t get involved. You’re a cunt.”. When she rightfully reacts in hurt and anger, Charle tries to soothe her by claiming he was joking. “The Shoop Shoop Song” by Merry Clayton, which plays as Charlie gets dressed in his apartment reflects Teresa’s concern about Charlie’s conflict about his love for her, and his desire to appease his uncle. She gets her answer in the next scene, much to her chagrin. Regarding sex and love, JR and Charlie are essentially the same, with the Madonna-whore dichotomy remaining. Throughout the movie, she is the only one who wants to leave, which earns her the scorn of Giovanni, who sees her as sick in the head and disrespectful for wanting to leave her parents’ house. Her epileptic condition, which echoes Scorsese’s asthma, marks her as an outsider in the community. Although Charlie claims to care about her, like with all the relationships in his life, Charlie fails to connect with her. In a scene following a heated argument with Johnny Boy, Teresa suffers from a seizure and falls to the floor. Charlie briefly checks on her before leaving her to the care of an elderly neighbor, played by Catherine Scorsese. Unfortunately, Teresa is by far the least developed character, only making a major appearance towards the end of the film I get that this was to show the masculine-dominated society of Little Italy, but overall, Teresa ends up just being a wasted character potential. However, Teresa is not without her deeply problematic faults. In one scene, she walks up to a black maid, who is clearly busy, and tells her to make sure she cleans her room. The maid replies that she only has two hands. Teresa rudely retorts, “Then use them.”. The true star of the film is Johnny Boy, whose gleeful, explosive, self-destructive nature is best exemplified in his introduction, where he blows up a mailbox with jubilant reckless abandonment. His anachronistic spirit is a perfect foil to Charlie’s more amiable nature. His introduction showcases his destructive nature, which results in him exploding into violent fights, as well as his carelessness regarding his mounting debts. Johnny Boy’s second introductory scene is in the bar, showcasing his wild and reckless nature. Despite owing Michael money, Johnny Boy confidently struts into the bar with a girl on each arm, as Charlie looks on with a look of concern. The bar is bathed in a reddish hue, that invokes hellish imagery, visually associating the bar as a den of sin and debauchery. Johnny Boy’s entrance to the bar is set to the song “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” by The Rolling Stones. This serves as an excellent use of music to further introduce a character with lyrics such as “I was born in a crossfire hurricane.” denoting Johnny Boy’s destructive nature. His relationship with Charlie is based on the relationship between Scorsese’s father, Charlie, and Charlie’s brother, Joe, who the latter would often get in trouble and had to be bailed out by Charlie. Johnny Boy’s flakiness with his debts put not only his life in danger but also Charlie’s reputation. Charlie’s relationship with Johnny Boy and Teresa also puts him at odds with Giovanni; who values normal behavior. Johnny Boy’s flakiness with his debts is not the only character flaw that annoys Giovanni, it’s also Johnny Boy’s senseless acts of violence. Although retribution through violence is a feared consequence of crossing the mob, violence is only ever used as a last resort for the mob. Unnecessary violence calls attention to itself, thus making Charlie’s association with Johnny Boy a liability. In addition to his acts of violence, Johnny Boy’s mouth also creates problems for Charlie. Following a skirmish at Fat Joey’s pool room, Johnny Boy calls Joey a “scumbag,” resulting in another senseless altercation. Johnny Boy’s tendency to say the wrong thing to the wrong person has much more dire consequences when he arrives hours late for a meeting with Michael to repay some of his debts with money given to him by Charlie. Johnny Boy only gives Michael ten dollars and tells him that he’s the one stupid enough to loan him money. He caps this off by calling Michael a “fuckin jerk-off” before wielding an unloaded gun at Michael. As Michael storms away, swearing revenge, Johnny Boy turns to Charlie and says, “You got what you wanted.” believing that Charlie will be happy to wash his hands of him. What Johnny Boy doesn’t count on is Charlie’s self-sacrificial nature. In this sense, Johnny Boy is the cross that Charlie must bear. Charlie’s and Johnny Boy’s relationship also harkens back to the comedic witticism of duos such as Abbott and Costello and Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in their Road to series, with one of the characters trying to pull a fast one on the other guy. Their comedic banter is often improvised dialogue that is shot in a series of simple shot/reverse shots, over-the-shoulder continuity, with an occasional two-shot of the duo. The improvisational spontaneity of the film, popularized by Godard and in American cinema by Cassavetes, Altman, and later Scorsese, lends the film a certain level of realism that showcases the raw talent of the actors.

Stylistically. Mean Streets utilizes the handheld camera work of cinéma verité to heighten the emotion of a scene. The fight scene in the pool hall showcases a budding Scorsese cinematic style that features intense scenes that burst with a sudden and fierce energy found in later Scorsese films such as Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, and Casino. In the scene, the camera weaves and dives throughout the scene with hyper-kinetic energy, creating the illusion that the audience is in the thick of the conflict. Although the scene is not particularly violent, the way it’s shot and framed feels authentic. The fight choreography is rough and all over the place, and the camera movements are nervous and sporadic, jumping and darting all over the place. All set to the diegetic song “Please Mr. Postman” by the Marvelettes. The fighting is amateurish, with nobody knowing quite how to fight. In this sense, it feels like a genuine bar fight, instead of an over-choreographed fight scene that utilizes quick flashy editing to hide the lazy fight choreography. In another scene that takes place in a bar, the camera seems to tilt and sway with the intoxicated crowd, and when violence suddenly breaks out the camerawork becomes disorientating, visually representing the shock and confusion of being in the bar when violence unexpectedly erupts. Mean Streets was released during the cynical transition from the idealism to the sixties to the gritter and more pessimistic seventies. This cynicism stemmed from the disillusionment many Americans felt after being lied to during the Watergate scandal and the ongoing quagmire of the Vietnam War. This anti-authoritarian and aimlessness first started making waves in American cinema in the late 1960s with the release of films such as The Graduate, Easy Rider, Bonnie and Clyde, and Targets. By the time Mean Streets came out in 1963, crime films were dominating the screen with The Sting, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Badlands, Magnum Force, Dillinger, and Serpico to name a few. As a crime/mob film, Mean Streets takes the most inspiration from the gangster films of the 1930s and 40s, such as White Heat, Scarface, and the Warner Bros gangster films, combined with the more stylized violence of New Hollywood films like Bonnie and Clyde,and The Godfather, with the climatic conclusion echoing the ending of Easy Rider, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the aforementioned Bonnie and Clyde. However, Mean Streets does not follow the typical rise-and-fall narrative prevalent in most gangster films. Nor does it try to imitate the upper echelons of mob life like in The Godfather, which was released a year prior. Instead, Mean Streets goes for a grittier look at mob life on the street level. The plot of Mean Streets is intentionally kept simplistic. The film does not try to tell a complicated sweeping narrative like The Godfather films, The Public Enemy, or Little Caesar. The plot is engaging and essential, to be sure. Still, the true focus of the film is the world-building of capturing a certain time and place, in this case, Little Italy in the 60s and 70s, that was quickly disappearing, as well as a character study of individuals who are pushed to the edge living in a tinder box that is about to erupt in violence. However, simply classifying Mean Streets is missing what Scorsese was trying to say when making this film. In this sense, Mean Streets has more in common with Fellini’s I Vitelloni than most gangster films. Both films are the director’s third film that is semi-autobiographical and feature young men who have goals and ambitions that are hindered by their juvenile behavior, with one of the main characters being a stand-ins for the director. In I Vitelloni, Moraldo is a stand-in for Fellini, and in Mean Streets, Charlie is a stand-in for Scorsese. The group of friends are introduced by narration or by text. In I Vitelloni, the characters are introduced through brief introductions. In Mean Streets, the characters are introduced in scenes that encapsulate their characteristics. Tony is introduced in his bar throwing out someone, and Michael is introduced realizing that he has been swindled in a botched deal. Johnny Boy recklessly blows up a mailbox with a cherry bomb, and Charlie is first seen seeking penance in a church. In his essay for Harper’s entitled “Il Maestro,” as well as in his 1999 documentary My Voyage to Italy, Scorsese discusses the influences he took from Fellini when making Mean Streets. Both films also end with the message that at some point, childhood friends need to grow up and accept responsibility, and in some cases, need to drift apart from one another. Mean Streets also takes inspiration from the films of the French New Wave, particularly Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. This is most notable in the bedroom scene with Charlie and Teresa, which echoes the exchange between Michel and Patricia. Both scenes feature young lovers in a tender bedroom setting, whose relationship is doomed to end in tragedy. In both films, there is a moment where one of the lovers peers at their partner through a means of obscuring the optical perception. In Breathless, Patricia looks at Michel through a rolled-up poster, and in Mean Streets, Charlie peeks at Teresa through his fingers.

            Although Mean Streets is the third feature film that Scorsese directed, it’s in this film that Scorsese finally found his voice and style. Who’s That Knocking at My Door? and Boxcar Bertha have their merits, but it’s with Mean Streets that audiences saw what Scorsese could do. Mean Streets came out during a time of rejuvenation in American cinema. In an era of great directors such as Brian de Palma, Mike Nichols, Sam Peckinpah, Arthur Penn, and John Cassavetes, Scorsese was finally able to cement himself as a truly great American auteur. In a year that saw the release of great films such as Truffaut’s Day for Night, Friedkin’s The Exorcist, Bogdanovich’s Paper Moon, Hill’s The Sting, Malick’s Badlands, and Lucas’s American Graffiti, Mean Streets stands out as one of the best films of 1973, as well as one of Scorsese’s best films.