“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.” — opening line of Mean Streets
Hollywood collapsed in the 1960s. It proved, if nothing else, that when it comes to big money, even Jews can screw up. A combination of anti-trust actions and the rise of television meant that studio lots fell silent, and the golden age of Hollywood was over. Fortunately a new generation of directors arose, bypassing the studio system and making movies in a way no one had ever done — because no one had ever thought to do so all the while the Hollywood machine was running at peak performance. One of the new movement’s earliest cinematic triumphs was Martin Scorsese’s breakthrough 1973 movie, Mean Streets.
These new kids on the block had their own heroes, the French auteurs of that country’s cinematic New Wave, along with similar trends in Italy and Britain. The fingerprints of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut are all over Mean Streets. Where Hollywood movies had developed a format based around separate, chapter-like scenes strongly visually established and all contributing to the development of a linear plot, the new techniques were looser, less structured, and often served to establish a mood rather than an unfolding narrative. There are a lot of scenes in Mean Streets of horseplay, fooling around, and dumb conversations which go nowhere.
One major reason Mean Streets got made was advice given to Scorsese by his hero and mentor John Cassavetes. Scorsese had debuted with the strong Boxcar Bertha in 1972, but Cassavetes told Scorsese he should make a picture which dealt with his own experience or else risk being locked into making cheap exploitation movies. Scorsese later referred to Mean Streets as “a declaration, a statement of who I am.” Who he was turned out to be a kid running around Little Italy with the other kids — Robert De Niro was in a rival street gang — soaking up an atmosphere which was a mixture of childhood rough-and-tumble, along with the darker side provided by the Mob.
Originally titled Season of the Witch, Scorsese felt the film’s eventual title — which has echoes of tough-guy B-movies and comes from a Raymond Chandler story — captured the mood of the tale perfectly. Roger Corman was so impressed he offered to fund the whole project if Scorsese moved the action from Little Italy and set it in the Afro-American community. Scorsese stuck with his vision until Jonathan Taplin, ex-road manager of The Band, stepped in with the whole budget of $600,000 (a little over $4 million today). Scorsese and The Band’s Robbie Robertson would become great friends.
On the subject of music, Mean Streets’ incidental score used a technique now familiar to moviegoers. In Goodfellas and Casino, Scorsese would go on to perfect the needle-drop “jukebox” feel to his soundtracks, and Mean Streets features memorable scenes heightened by the accompanying music — which is not background music, being upfront in the mix. Charlie, played by Harvey Keitel, wakes up after a troubled sleep to The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.” De Niro’s character Johnny Boy swanks into a sleazy bar with a girl on each arm while The Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” fills the air. Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie owe a lot to Scorsese.
The four central characters each have a short establishing scene at the movie’s outset, and Scorsese shows he has already mastered a key technique of film writing and editing: economy. Establishing a character early is vital to a movie’s dynamic. In the 1966 film Harper, Paul Newman plays a hard-nosed, womanizing gumshoe — is there any other sort? — and we get a definitive glimpse into his life as, like Charlie in Mean Streets, he wakes up and begins his day. He goes to make coffee only to find the tin empty. He opens the trash can to reveal yesterday’s filter, full of soggy grounds. After a moment of inner struggle, Harper fishes it out and makes the coffee anyway. In that moment, we see his whole existence.
After the opening credits roll on Mean Streets, which run over a Super-8, home movie-style series of jump cuts featuring the main characters, the tone of the world in which these small-time gangsters move is set by a funfair cutting to a junkie fixing up in a filthy toilet, and the quartet of lead characters are shown in a montage. Bar owner Tony runs the junkie out and beats up his dealer. Next is gang boss Michael, overseeing some illicit transfer of goods between trucks before discovering that we he had thought was a consignment of German film lenses prior to purchase are in fact Japanese, and useless. A jaded look of bored disgust remains on his face for the whole movie. Next, we see De Niro as Johnny Boy, casually posting something in a mailbox. It turns out to be quite a powerful bomb, which blows the box to pieces as Johnny walks away. He doesn’t steal anything — there’s nothing left to steal — it’s just sheer devilment. When we get to Charlie, we find him in church, wondering how simple catechisms from a priest could possibly absolve a man of his sins, and brooding over the flames of Hell. He holds his finger in a candle flame, but doesn’t last long. “Pain in hell has two sides,” says his inner voice. “The kind you can touch with your hand, and the kind you can feel in your heart.”
This is a main subplot of the movie. For Charlie, a theological question dominates: How does punk street morality square with divine providence? Charlie’s girlfriend Theresa, Johnny Boy’s sister, pulls him up short on the relationship between what he does and how he stands with his maker. Charlie has just expressed admiration for St. Francis of Assisi when she reminds him that “St. Francis didn’t run numbers.”
I always admired Keitel before his huge career boost in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, playing a hard-headed clean-up man who just so happens to clean up after grisly murders. He is outstanding as a police inspector obsessed with a suspect in Nic Roeg’s brilliant 1980 dysfunctional love story, Bad Timing. Jon Voigt was originally cast in the role of Charlie in Mean Streets, but delayed confirmation right up until the first day of shooting, when he dropped out, leaving the way free for Keitel.
Charlie’s metaphysical dilemma aside, the main tension in Mean Streets is the relationship between Johnny Boy and the excellent Richard Romanus as Michael. Johnny owes Michael money — a lot of money for the streets, especially with the infamous “vig” on top, the vertiginous interest. Charlie covers for Johnny and promises payment, at least in part. But not only does Johnny fail to come up with any money save a paltry $30, he openly taunts Michael:
You know what, Michael? You make me laugh. I mean, I borrow money all over this neighborhood, from left and right, from everybody, and I never pay them back, so I can’t borrow no money from nobody no more, right? So who does that leave me to borrow money from but you? I borrow money from you because you’re the only jerk-off around here that I can borrow money from without paying back.
Michael wads up a $10 bill and throws it at Johnny, who gets out his Zippo and sets light to it. De Niro is laughing the whole way through, Romanus glowering, and it is Scorsese’s brilliance to make this scene crackle with tension.
At times, the film is funny despite its subject matter. The scene in which a fight in a pool room is started by one of the hoodlums calling another a “mook,” a word none of them knows the meaning of, is pure slapstick.
The influence of the French New Wave is once again evident in the camera work, and a lot of the movie was shot on hand-held cameras. This gives the mis en scène a feel best described as “unsteadicam” (Steadicam being a revolutionary camera-stabilizing system introduced to Hollywood in the late 1950s). In one scene, Scorsese gives a frighteningly accurate visual account of the experience of being utterly drunk achieved by strapping the camera to Keitel’s body.
The code of the mean streets has many clauses, but one of the most important states that it doesn’t matter how capable you are at the job, if your friends are a problem, you become a problem, too — and Johnny Boy is a major liability for Charlie. The rest of the mob guys are reluctant to promote Charlie all the time he hangs around with the no-goodnik Johnny Boy. And the more Michael sees Johnny flashing the cash — his cash — at the bar, the more we feel the bloody denouement creeping closer. Like a Greek tragedy, hubris and nemesis are present and correct in Mean Streets.
I haven’t been to the movies in ten years. I’ve never even seen a cinema in Costa Rica; perhaps there’s an old Nickelodeon on a goat farm somewhere, I don’t know. But I still vaguely follow the cinema without seeing much more than trailers, and I wonder what type of movie gets made — is allowed to get made — nowadays. What does woke cinema leave you with? I watched The Deer Hunter again recently, and in the first, agonizing Russian roulette scene, I thought: They couldn’t make this now. Then I had an immediate second thought: Of course they could, and it would still be set in Vietnam. The difference would be that De Niro and Walken would be strapping, whiter-than-white camp commandants, and they would be forcing the gooks to play spin the barrel.
I can’t get out of this very American film without using a very American cliché: Mean Streets is a helluva movie. It’s a sock in the jaw, and, among other ground broken, it helped make movie violence visceral, more realistic than Hollywood’s usual one-shot deaths with a small bloodstain, which had yet become the absurd hail of automatic fire that sprays across today’s screens. This is street-level violence, and Peckinpah was waiting in the wings. Movie violence seems to have become a ballistic, graphic novel-style orgy now, from what I have seen of John Wick and his ilk.
If you are a Scorsese aficionado you will, of course, know Mean Streets. If not, it is one of the movies that made 1970s American film a new golden age of cinema.
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22 comments
While I can’t necessarily disagree with any of your analysis, there’s just something about Mean Streets that never “lured me in.” I’ve tried to watch it several times over the years, and I can never seem to become immersed in the world Scorsese presents there, at least not in the same way I do with, say, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, or Gangs of New York (which I think is highly underrated). I’m not sure if it’s the dialogue or the characters or what. I can certainly appreciate it as a cinematic achievement, but I just don’t respond viscerally to it.
All that being said, I’m sure it’s exponentially better than Killers of the Flower Moon, which just looks fucking horrible. Anyway, good essay, I always enjoy reading your stuff on CC.
I agree. I’ve attempted Mean Streets several times as well. It’s certainly no Cry Uncle.
I generally love Scorsese, but Mean Streets never grabbed me by the throat, either. Then again, I think he’ll never top The King of Comedy, so I’m probably an outlier.
I couldn’t agree more. The King of Comedy is Scorsese’s unheralded masterpiece. I’m a little curious Jim, having achieved a certain level of notoriety have you ever experienced a Rupert Pupkinesque fanatic?
Quite a few of them. I cover them in my book The Headache Factory. There was a particularly obsessed Korean jilted fan who co-stalked both me and Gavin McInnes whom I referred to as Rupert Pup Kim.
I haven’t seen King of Comedy since probably the early 90s. Probably worth a re-watch on my part.
I have had the same experience, as much as I admire the film (especially the performances), I was never really able to get “into” it, even after repeated viewings. Certainly everything that makes Scorsese Scorsese is already there in this one.
I agree wholeheartedly. You put your finger on the sentiment I was having trouble expressing. It’s all over the place from start to finish, that movie, frenetic, frantic, disheveled—in a way his other movies usually only end up being. The Departed is the only one of his films that avoids this rapidly chaotic descent from what had often been glimpses of perfection early on.
My favorite performance by Harvey Keitel is in Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant. He probably would have won an Oscar for his role if it had not been for it’s NC-17 rating due to very lurid subject matter. I can’t recommend it enough but it’s not for the faint of heart. It will make you want a hot shower afterwards.
Did you like the one from 2009 with Nicholas Cage? Apparently, the director of the newer one (whose name I forget) and Ferrara had a huge falling out over it. I actually liked the Cage one, but I think I’m in the minority on that.
When I first heard about it being made, I thought another bullshit cash grab from some no name director. Then I found out Werner Herzog was directing it so my attitude changed. I can’t recall exactly how it ended up with the name, I do remember Abel Ferrara lashing out at Herzog. I’m a huge fan of Herzog’s films so I figured I would like it, but was pleasantly surprised at how much. Any film with an over the top Nicolas Cage role is worth a watch and this is no exception(check out Mandy if you haven’t already). I still think the original is way better because it’s a visceral gut punch while the Herzog film feels more like a caricature of the original.
I have seen Mandy, and it was truly a wild ride. Great ending, too. It was cool to see Cage back in that kind of role again.
Ferrara could have become a film history footnote for exploitation fare like The Driller Killer. Spot on that Bad Lieutenant is jarring and unnerving, and a coup for Keitel. This may also have been a milestone in making anti-heroes a popular subject. The quasi-spin-off by Werner Herzog seemed like a dumb idea with a silly title, but is solid…And he got a good performance out of histrionic Nicholas Cage. Given that Herzog once pulled a gun on Klaus Kinski to quench his bullshit, it made for a great collaboration… Herzog has a bit of Bad Lieutenant in him. So of course he graduated from dragging ships over mountains to conducting opera.
Have you seen Ferrara’s Ms. 45? It’s between that and Bad Lieutenant for me as my favorite. Trashy but artsy as well.
Fitzcarraldo is another top ten for me. The documentary My Best Fiend by Herzog about his relationship with Kinski is superb as well.
It’s possible Herzog is a man of the right. He is savvy in dealing with ‘the system’ and his version of Bad Lieutenant slyly subverts the Hollywood action picture while superficially playing by its rules. Herzog is careful not to say anything too likely to infuriate the left, has done his own thing, and has specialized in obsessive men for subject matter. If he had directed more women he would have long been decried as being abusive, as has been levied against Hitchcock, Bertoclucci, von Trier, Kubrick… Is is abuse or being tough and demanding of excellence? When the directors act this way towards male actors, no one seems to notice. The Left seems to love Herzog, who directs ‘white’ operas. I guess Klaus Kinski could have whined Herzog threatened to kill him in a murder-suicide, but he changed his diaper and turned in some iconic performances. My Best Fiend and Burden of Dreams are some of the best behind the scenes documentaries about film. Please Kill Mr. Kinski is a fun short film about a horror film director trying to cope with Kinski’s maddening tantrums. Such a film could never be made about the bad behavior of any number of protected groups.
The wild thing about rewatching Mean Streets after 25 years was seeing Richie Aprile (David Proval)) again…
I just want to chime in to say I thought the Deer Hunter sucked rocks
That’s not a Scorsese film.
I like Scorsese’s 1974 documentary about his own family, “Italianamerican” filmed in the Little Italy apartment his parents were still living in at that time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcWUNfmf0tI
It’s hard for me to enjoy watching Scorsese films anymore, simply because I enjoyed them very much while going through a real dipshit phase in my own life (not his fault, of course, just too many bad associations). But your analyses of movies and music are always highly enjoyable reads, regardless of the subject matter. This one is no exception.
I short list this among the 6 or so most favorite Scorsese films. It is palpable how hungry the director and actors are to do something fresh. I’d add Italian neorealism film as a part of the influence here, appearing less and less in his films as he settled into the Scorsese style. The scene where Johnny taunts Michael causes nausea and dread just thinking about it. You can see it in all the modern gang related killings over ‘rep’ and being ‘dissed’, but even amongst this community when people want to claw each others eyes out over rivalries and tweets.
“There are a lot of scenes in Mean Streets of horseplay, fooling around, and dumb conversations which go nowhere.” My favorite of those scenes is when two of the main characters are approached by some “kids” from Riverdale, The Bronx (which the kids pronounce “Rivahdale”), who want to buy drugs. Without breaking stride, their conversation, or their train of thought, the two casually take the kids’ money and rip them off. These “kids” looked 19 or 20, and white, whereas Riverdale is a heavily Jewish area. I felt bad for those kids, and even bristled that Scorsese portrayed Riverdale youth as weak white patsies and not smartalecky Woody Allen/IDF types. Still, a great “inconsequential” scene.
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