Mean Streets (1973)
Directed by Martin Scorsese

Film Review

That most formulaic of genres, the gangster movie, was changed forever in the mid-1970s, totally redefined and re-energised by two films that have come to be regarded as landmarks of American cinema.  The first was Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972), which chartered the rise and fall of a Mafia family across the blood-soaked decades of the 20th century.  The second was Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese's first important film and possibly the most original and influential gangster film of all time.  In contrast to Coppola's epic, meticulously plotted chef d'oeuvre, Scorsese's film is a rambling, episodic slice-of-life that feels more like a fly-on-the-wall documentary than a genre film, a film that seethes with raw energy and conveys, with the fierce reality of a savage head butt, the precariousness and danger of life in America's criminal underworld.   Scorsese went on to make many superb films after this - Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1982) - but this is probably the film that had most impact and shows him at his most inspired, a rampant auteur in the thrall of the directors of the French New Wave, notably Jean-Luc Godard, whose work is casually referenced throughout the film.

Mean Streets not only established Martin Scorsese as one of America's leading directors, it also put the then virtually unknown actor Robert De Niro firmly on the map.  It is hard to imagine another American actor who was better suited for the role of the dangerously unstable but strangely likeable petty hoodlum Johnny Boy, the man who blows up mailboxes without a qualm and shoots bullets into the night sky for no particular reason but who runs in fright like a scared toddler when he sees a caged lion cub.  Bursting from the screen in the kind of role in which he is most comfortable, De Niro somehow manages to make himself the centre of the film, ripping the focus (by force of personality alone) from the actor who is supposedly in the lead role, Harvey Keitel.

Although very nearly eclipsed by De Niro, Keitel turns in one of his finest performances as the aspiring racketeer Charlie who struggles to reconcile his Catholic teachings with the sordid reality of his dishonest métier.  The story of Charlie is one that Graham Greene may have written, and echoes of Brighton Rock are discernible as Charlie drags himself down a gruelling and pretty gore-stained path to redemption.  Adopting an almost cinéma vérité style of filmmaking (which includes pioneering use of the hand-held camera), Scorsese plunges the spectator into Charlie's chaotic, angst-ridden world, and we emerge from this intensely vicarious experience (as from Godard's debut feature À bout de souffle) gasping for air.  Mean Streets may not be as slick, focussed and viewer-friendly as Scorsese's subsequent gangster films but it has a vitality, boldness and razor-sharp authenticity that not even Scorsese could match in his later work.  This is the gangster film at its most intelligent and uninhibited - an unforgettable walk on the wild side.

Film Synopsis

Charlie works as a debt collector for his gangster uncle Giovanni in the Little Italy district of New York City.  A devout Catholic, he has difficulty reconciling his criminal ambitions with his religious beliefs and constantly wonders how he is to atone for his sins.  Giovanni has big plans for his nephew but insists that Charlie must break off his friendship with Johnny Boy, whose gambling addiction and irrational behaviour makes him an unreliable helper.  Charlie further antagonises his uncle by starting a love affair with Johnny Boy's epileptic cousin, Teresa.  When Johnny Boy picks a fight with a vicious lone shark named Michael the fate of Charlie and his friends appears to be sealed...