Be My Bloody Baby: 'Mean Streets'

I miss New York City. I miss the New York City I've never seen -- the one I've only seen in movies. And after spending time in the Capital of the World a little over a year ago, I thought of all kinds of New York movies (from Manhattan to Rosemary’s Baby to 42nd Street to The Naked City to Midnight Cowboy to Something Wild -- the Carroll Baker Ralph Meeker version, to After Hours to Broadway Danny Rose to The Lost Weekend and on and on and on). But strolling through some beautiful areas and others much too cleaned up (Times Square), my mind wandered to James Cagney and John Garfield growing up so gorgeously tough and talented in various, rough and tumble areas, and the Dead End Kids gaining advice from both of those street-wise geniuses as they, cinematically speaking, brawled and cracked wise on those corners. And then my mind returned to a movie that for me, is this city -- Mean Streets. Even if much was filmed in Los Angeles, my point still stands, moreso even. Through Scorese's (and his actors) powerfully New York vision melding with that magic called movies, this does not feel like Los Angeles.

And of course much has been written about Martin Scorsese’s masterwork and most of us love it (if you love movies, how can you not?). But it had been quite some time since I watched the picture, and upon returning, my ardor was re-ignited. As Woody Allen would say, I don’t just love the movie, I luurve it. And with further reflection, I thought the picture, of late anyway, just doesn't get its due anymore. Do we take it for granted? We shouldn't. It's absolutely perfect.

Let’s just start with the opening -- an opening that ranks as one of the greatest title sequences of all time.  The screen is black. A faceless narrator exclaims: "You don't make up for your sins at church; you do it in the streets; you do it at home. The rest is bullshit, and you know it." A young man wakes up in the middle of the night. The sounds of the city are outside. He walks over to his bedroom mirror, takes a look at himself and then returns to bed. As his head reclines toward his pillow, he is suddenly moving in slow motion. The thumping beat of the Ronettes' "Be My Baby" begins and the scene shifts to a screening of Super-8 films of the young man and his friends. Just as Ronnie Spector breaks into the beautifully sweet chorus of "Be my, be my baby," the film reveals its title in plain, typewritten letters: Mean Streets.

Yes. This opening always gets me right in the gut and mysteriously both the hard and soft places of my heart. It even, at times, almost makes me cry. No, not almost. It does make me cry. It’s just so raggedly lovely and wonderfully bittersweet and beautiful and tough and tender. It's reminiscent of a past that isn't entirely mine and yet, Scorsese makes me feel like it was -- almost one hundred percent. It gets me the way Wes Anderson gets me when Margot walks off that bus to Nico's "These Days" or Harold drives his car to Cat Stevens' "Trouble" or Benjamin Braddock depressively swims and fornicates to Simon and Garfunkle's "April Come She Will" or Sam Rothstein falls for Ginger to "Love is Strange" (I could list more than a dozen Scorsese music moments that touch me in multiple ways).   

Released in 1973, Mean Streets, a masterpiece of story, substance, music, camerawork and color, is one of the most influential movies of the last 30-odd years. Inspired by, among other influences, classic Hollywood cinema, the documentaries of David and Albert Maysles, the French New Wave, and of course, Scorsese’s own life growing up and observing life in New York City, Mean Streets' raw, blood-soaked power has still, in my mind, found no cinematic equal. Aesthetically and thematically honest, as well as experimental and purposeful, it’s a work of art that’s never faded through time. It still makes me revved up and emotional and depressed and happy and, yearning. There’s a yearning to Mean Streets that not only taps into creating something within your own personal life, but to create something, anything outside of it. As with all of Scorsese, there's a sensuality to it that's bloody and lovely and in moments, profoundly moving.

The story is noir bathed in red light. Harvey Keitel plays Charlie, an inhabitant of New York's Little Italy who is raggedly progressing toward manhood. His best friend is Johnny Boy (Robert DeNiro), a volatile, immature but ultimately lovable character who gets Charlie in more trouble than he needs. Charlie is trying his best to become something, but he is met with constant dilemmas. He works for his uncle (Cesare Danova), an old-school Mafioso who would like to move him up in the business. But Uncle disapproves of Charlie's friends, chiefly his epileptic lover, Teresa (Amy Robinson), and Johnny Boy, who is "touched in the head" and an instigator of unnecessary disorder. Uncle advises Charlie to remove them from his life. But this is not so easy. Nothing is easy for Charlie. Strongly Catholic, he is guilt-ridden by his every move. While he sits at the bar in his neighborhood hangout, questioning his penance, he watches Johnny Boy walk toward him and almost humorously asks: "You talk about penance and this is what walks through the door?"

Johnny Boy certainly walks through the door. His entrance is a tour de force of exciting visual and sonorous stimuli. Bathed in the bloody red light of the bar, shot in slow motion and accompanied by the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin Jack Flash," the joy and ambiguity of Johnny Boy is summed up in less than 30 seconds. He is the streets; he is exciting, nervous energy; he is trouble amidst trouble; he’s your future if you don’t watch out. And he’s also one hell of a fighter on a pool table -- the way he kicks with such intent. In fact, that “Mook” fight tuned to “Please Mr. Postman” is one of my favorite fight scenes in a movie. It’s so sloppy and real yet funny and repugnant. This is how fights really happen. They're a scary mess but sometimes, oddly hilarious.

And Johnny Boy is kind of hilarious. The symbol of uncertainty that, like the streets, threatens the picture's world with kinetic violence, he’s an attractive force. But like many reckless forces, they burn out. Charlie attempts to ride this out with some semblance of control, but he can’t avoid the tumult that will engulf around his own life. What is so unequivocally brilliant about this film is that Charlie never has to tell us as much. Because of Scorsese's expert technique, we know the picture's nature instinctively. Scorsese displays the randomness of these people's lives with saturating experimentalism; his inventive style is not a glaring gimmick but a natural expression of street and conscience.

Mean Streets contains so many influential techniques it would require pages to list them all, but some do bear mentioning--particularly for how they are abused in present cinema. As most of us know, Mean Streets, like other filmmakers of the period utilized the New Wave technique of a moving camera, now seen often in movies and TV commercials. It used Super-8 film stock to convey happy, jumpy memories, which is now an overused, trite standard á la The Wonder Years and countless other more recent examples. Mean Streets employed the character-introducing title sequence, where key figures are shown doing something (Johnny Boy blows up a mailbox), and then their names are typewritten on the screen. This was used in Trainspotting, a movie that has more than a few references to Scorsese. It was scored with pop music as an interesting counterpoint to violence (clearly, Scorsese's musicality has been imitated effectively in films like Blood Simple and Reservoir Dogs). Mean Streets' film references -- Charlie watching John Ford's The Searchers and Uncle watching Fritz Lang's The Big Heat- -- contained a specific potency that plays differently than the reference-soaked movies of Quentin Tarantino. I love Tarantino's operatic movie mélange but with films now so readily available on DVD, Mean Streets snippet from The Searchers feels rarer, and in a way, more sacred.

I'm not one to downgrade the importance of Citizen Kane and its influences (and certainly Scorsese wouldn’t as well) but Mean Streets is at this point, just as influential. Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas may make the AFI lists, but Mean Streets deserves high mention. So many films emulate Mean Streets, but very few have achieved its beautiful, ugly, vulnerable, violent and thrilling power. If a movie could talk me into having sex in a dirty bathroom in some dive bar in NYC, Mean Streets could. If a movie could serve as my most beloved dysfunctional ex boyfriend, Mean Streets would be him. It's one of the great loves of my life.

Comments

[bill]

agreed the opening is genius..this film hold a special place in my heart..for many reasons
Bill in Chi-Town

[Jeremy Richey]

Total agreement here Kim, It's a wonderful film and it has lost none of its power. I'm honestly not sure where I would rank it among my favorite Scorsese films, as I am in love with so many, but it is undeniably one of the most important...

"contained a specific potency that plays differently than the reference-soaked movies of Quentin Tarantino. I love Tarantino's operatic movie mélange (so do I) but with films now so readily available on DVD, Mean Streets snippet from The Searchers feels rarer, and in a way, more sacred."

You really hit on something here. I'm also impressed by how Scorsese was already able to reference his own films in this period (a sign of a true auteur) as Mean Streets is so connected to Who's That Knockin on My Door. While that earlier film isn't the masterpiece Mean Streets is, I think it is far more valubale than just the dry run many label it as. I'm amazed by how in tune Scorsese already was in terms of the themes and images he was looking to get across, and how even at this early stage his films feel connected. Even Boxcar Bertha is far from the 'work strictly for hire' it could have been and it is very much a Martin Scorsese picture (and a brillinat one on my eyes). The guy had and has the amazing ability to capture his influences and his own works like no other.
Also, on New York...I miss it too. It's not the same city that I remember from living there briefly when I was a kid in the mid seventies, and the films set there today aren't the New York films I grew up with. Honestly it makes me more than a little sad.

[COOP]

Agreed. The poolhall fight is amazing, the way that it winds down, then starts up again, the hilariously stupid dialog, it seem more like Scorcese filmed an actual fight that broke out among the actors than a staged scene.

Richard Romanus is fucking great in that movie -totally underrated.

[Jack Maxfield]

You guys do know that _Mean Streets_ was shot mostly in Los Angeles, don't you?

Well, never mind. Far be it from me to put a damper on any celebration of this brilliant film. I first saw it when I was 14 on plain ol' videotape, and I remember walking around in my neighborhood in a daze for literally hours afterwards, mainly thinking, "WOW. What a great movie. Wow."

[Shubhajit]

Thanks for this wonderful review. I just can't wait to watch Mean Streets again. The Scorsese-De Niro team has really given us a bagful of cinematic gems!

[Campaspe]

That's a hell of a story that Wolcott used to link to this, too.

A total mind-blowing masterpiece, and you wrote it up beautifully. I particularly like your discussion of the music in this movie. Scorsese never just pastes in a song, the scene is always beautifully, rhythmically coordinated with the soundtrack. This movie is so kinesthetic it almost seems choreographed as much as shot, but the action is still truthful and organic. When I see the technique imitated it's often done quite well, as in Trainspotting, but somehow it never has the same pulsing perfection as in Scorsese.

[pj]

A perfect description of what it's like to watch this movie. You didn't leave anything out. Nicely done. A great, great movie. Thanks for the reminder.

[JJB]

Neither James Cagney nor Julius Garfinkle (aka John Garfield) grew up in Hell's Kitchen, which is on the West Side of Manhattan. Cagney was born in the Lower East Side and grew up in Yorkville. JG was from Brooklyn and the Bronx.

I too love Mean Streets. I've always thought Richard Romanus' performance has been shamefully neglected, and his character's introduction scene a masterpiece of understated humor. He's in a car with someone down by the docks, trying to sell him what he's been told is a stolen shipment of high quality photo equipment ("Kraut lenses," as he calls them). "These ain't Kraut lenses," the potential buyer says, "they're Jap adapters." Romanus, a look of panicked horror on his face, looks out the car window and mumbles incredulously "Jap adapters?", no doubt imagining untold numbers of dollar bills flying away in the breeze.

Great scene, great movie. I like what DeNiro does in it, but was always much more impressed by what Romanus and Harvey Keitel accomplished in this film. As good as DeNiro was, it was a much showier role, easier to play. The other two characters provide the film's backbone, and weak performances by either Keitel or Romanus would have fatally hurt the movie.

[papa zita]

I thought DeNiro blew up a payphone, or am I mistaken? It's been a few years since I've seen it.

[Kim Morgan]

Yes. JG and JC did not grow up in Hell's Kitchen. And no, DeNiro did not blow up a payphone -- he did indeed cherry bomb a mailbox:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRpqKKPjuNI

And yes, Keitel and Romanus are brilliant. This is one of Keitel's greatest roles.

Thank you!

[Bob Demyan]

You nailed something that goes beyond just the greatness of this film--the NYC of that wonderful, neon-stained, porn-soaked, graffiti-adorned and often dangerous time. While I love Mean Streets, Taxi Driver nails something more fundamental, in my opinion, about THAT NYC, say from 1965-1985. Think Travis Bickles' POVs through windshield wipers smearing the neon and the tail lights of a thousand other Checkers. Perhaps Mean Streets is a snapshot of the characters of the city while Taxi Driver nails something about THE character of the city at that most wonderful and unsanitized moment when NYC WAS the dicey and messy heart of the universe.

[C. Jerry]

There was also a clip of Corman's Tomb of Ligeia somewhere in there as I recall.

[Wallace Stroby]

Maybe it's just me, but if you watch carefully, I think all the home video versions of MEAN STREETS - including the most recent DVD edition - have reels out of order. Very early in the VHS and DVD prints, Charlie tells his uncle he was at the scene of the shooting (his uncle insists "No, you were not"), but that incident (David Carradine's character shot in the bathroom at Tony's bar) doesn't happen until later in the film. Likewise, early in the DVD, when Michael and Tony scam some teenagers over fireworks, Tony's hand is bandaged and splinted, but he doesn't actually injure it until the poolroom fight much later in the film. In the interim, the bandage disappears, then reappears after the fight.

[JK]

I don't know you, but would you marry me?

[rob]

could i be the guy to talks you into sex in the dingy bathroom?

[Marios Karydis]

Loved your article! For a full bootleg soundtrack of Scorsese’s “Mean Streets (1973)” (all 27 tracks in "order of appearence" in the film, including CD packaging) all the mooks interested can download it (free ofcourse) here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/310633077/Mean_Streets_OST__1973_.zip

“Me Neither, I Don’t Run Numbers!”