Mean Streets (1973, Martin Scorsese)

"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." This is the opening line in the film read by Martin Scorsese himself just before Charlie awakens from his nightmare and sets the premiss for the film. Originally titled Season of the Witch (which Charlie even mentions in the film) and which also almost became a blaxploitation film with Roger Corman (as this was the hot trend of the time) but Scorsese flew solo on this one and stuck to his roots.

After reading Scorsese by Ebert by the late Roger Ebert, I felt a sudden urge to watch Mean Streets again, his most biographical and unpolished early masterpiece, the third film of his after Boxcar Bertha (produced by Roger Corman).

Mean Streets is set and partly filmed on the streets of Little Italy, New York (some scenes were also filmed in L.A. and disguised as New York) and based on the early life of Martin Scorsese himself and his friends, what he witnessed in his neighbourhood, the crowds he hung out with and the atmosphere he grew up in.

We have Charlie (Harvey Keitel), who is obviously playing Martin Scorsese, just as J.R. is obviously Martin Scorsese in his first film "Who's That Knocking at My Door?" back in 1967 (the first film to feature rock 'n' roll rather than just typical music score).

To start with one of Charlie's friends is Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) is a crazy kid who does what he wants without reason or thinking of consequences (such as in the opening scene where he blows up a mailbox for no apparent reason). He's a loose canon on a road to destruction who even borrow's money from anyone and pays no one back, and this soon becomes Charlie's problem.

In the midst of all this, Charlie is trying to move up in the mafia world with his uncle Giovanni (Cesare Danova) and take on the restaurant business but as Giovanni said, "Honourable men go with honourable men". Charlie is also seeing Johnny's cousin Theresa who according to Giovanni is "sick in the head" (due to her epilepsy) and is told by Giovanni to stay away from Theresa and of course Johnny boy.

There are many great details in this raw picture. Notice how the bar where they all hang out owned by their friend Tony (David Proval) is shot in a deep red colour where the rest of the scenes are shot in normal colour. Why? Charlie is religiously conflicted and the bar is where Charlie is away from his responsibilities and God, and the bar is loaded with all forms temptations for red is the colour of sex, violence and temptation. We slowly witness in the film that Charlie walks a thin line from trying to please all sides and trying to do the right thing is far from easy.

In this bar we even see Charlie getting a shot poured into his glass with his thumbs over the glass forming a crucifix as if part of the ceremony of a mass and there's also his way of penance as Charlie does not believe in confession, so he places his hand over a lit flame for a few seconds as a form of penance (similar to Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver where he places his arm over an open flame on the stove).

There are even hints in the film as to what is going to happen, the gang end up going to the movies (after they rip off some kids seeking to buy some drugs) a few times in the film, once to see Charlie's hero, John Wayne in The Searchers where we are shown the scene where Martin Pawley is in a brawl with another man over a woman but no one really gets hurt. (This happens in this picture where the gang shows up in a pool bar and there is a fight but no one really gets hurt and is ended with a cop taking a bribe to leave them alone). Then we also see Charlie, Johnny and Therese going to see The Tomb of Ligeia, this assures us that the female lead (Theresa) is doomed.

This is one of the greatest American indipendent films ever made from the master with the first great performance from Robert De Niro (after being turned down the role of Sonny in The Godfather) and introduces the great Martin Scorsese to the world in all his fury and as Pauline Kael stated, it's "a triumph of personal film-making".

Click here for the trailer

Rating: A+