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Reaction Paper to Mean Streets

Reaction Paper to Mean Streets Mean Streets' greatest influence in American cinema was not on directors or scriptwriters (though its influence there was considerable) but rather on actors. The film has Harvey Keitel (as Charlie) at its center, whose solidity and slight dullness as an actor keeps the film from spinning off into total anarchy; but it is Robert De Niro's Johnny Boy (Charlie's wild, self-destructive friend whom he looks out for with all the obsessiveness of an older brother) that gives the film its charge. Johnny Boy dances and gyrates and leaps and spins about the edges of the film, continually threatening to take it into and out of chaos (which he finally does). De Niro's performance, which remains as hilarious and breath-taking as ever - was a revelation at the time. De Niro took naturalistic, "method" acting to new highs, and his Johnny Boy is possibly the very first performance of its kind. It's a genuine portrayal of a street punk whose charm and obnoxiousness are almost uncannily intertwined - you can't despise Johnny Boy, but you can't respect him much, either. You just have to love him. It's easy enough to imagine Charlie's frustration over this kid - De Niro's work here adds depth and veracity to Keitel's, and the two actors work so well together that some of their scenes ? like the one they have together in Taxi Driver - have an almost hallucinatory buzz to them. Aside from its acting, the other major influence which Mean Streets had upon American film-makers was through it's use of a rock n' roll soundtrack (almost perfectly integrated with the images), and in its depiction of a new kind of screen violence. Unexpected, volatile, explosive and wholly senseless, yet, for all that, undeniably cinematic violence. The way in which Scorsese blends these two - the rock and roll and the violence - shows that he understood instinctively, better than anyone else until then, that cinema (or at least this kind of cinema, the kinetic, visceral kind) and rock n' roll are both expressions of revolutionary instincts, and that they are as inherently destructive as they are creative. This simple device - brutal outbreaks of violence combined with an upbeat soundtrack - has been taken up by both the mainstream cinema at large and by many individual `auteurs', all of whom are in Scorsese's debt - Stone and Tarantino coming at once to mind. The climatic violence of the film, and its masterly, melancholy, almost dreamlike epilogue, constitute the film's best sequence: a montage of the various characters, doing what they do, while Johnny Boy staggers off clutching his neck wound, and opera plays on the soundtrack. The violence is shocking above all because it seems unnecessary, arbitrary, even if also (because Scorsese has prepared us) wholly inevitable. Michael has Johnny Boy shot (Scorsese plays the assassin who kisses his gun before firing) out of sheer petulance, simply because he can. He's playing all the ruthless gangsters from all the Hollywood movies he's ever seen, he's fulfilling a form, upholding a cliché; it's a vicious, petty act, one that makes death no more meaningful than a pool-room brawl, and murder no more than a childish, random expression of vanity. Mean Streets, shows us the confusion that small men make between heroic or noble acts and silly, vain imitations of the movies (and other fantasies that play upon us). The fact that Johnny Boy does not die but is probably mortally wounded adds rather than detracts from the horror and the despair of these final images. Also, that the one innocent, Johnny Boy's cousin and Michael's girlfriend Theresa (Amy Robinson) is perhaps the most severely wounded - we only see her bloodied arm poking through a hole in the windshield. Mean Streets suffers perhaps from a lack of a unifying vision - it is fragmented, like the world which it describes, and it might be fair to say that it's closer to a great documentary than a great drama. But this is not really a criticism, merely an observation. Mean Streets is as powerful and as disturbing, and as hallucinatory, a `documentary' as was ever put on film, and for its kind, it stands alone. At its best it is an authentic glimpse of the streets, in all their petty meanness, a world, an inferno, which most of us will never know first-hand, but effects us just the same. Mean Streets accomplishes the end of all great art - it takes us somewhere we would normally never care (or dare) to go, and shows us that we were perhaps already there, all along. Where Mean Streets shines is in the technical virtuosity of Scorsese, as filtered through his command of the camera, lighting, space and music. Typified by the excellent opening sequence, which introduces the major characters with scenes of their own, Scorsese captures exactly what he wants you to see and nothing more. Thus at times the view is from above, sometimes from below and, for the more dynamic scenes, a hand-held camera comes into play. At all times the actors are where Scorsese wants them, placed to achieve the desired balance. Sharp editing then ensures maximum impact. An unusual touch is the incredible use of color, saturated deep into the red in bars, then over-exposed almost to monochrome elsewhere. By itself this is merely impressive, overall pushing the film stock in this way deepens the tone of the picture. The use of red could be seen to symbolize violence and passion but also add to the creation of a dreamlike atmosphere. However, for all his vaunted technical ability, Scorsese doesn't make you care for either Charlie or Johnny. Their characters are so clear-cut and unyielding that there's no room for emotional ambiguity, which removes any opportunity for emotional identification. As hustlers they are, all surface and no substance. The point is that while Scorsese assembles almost all of the pieces needed for Mean Streets, he doesn't quite marshal them in the harmonious and involving fashion of his later films. As a result Mean Streets is a bit of a con, blinding you with showmanship to the void beneath. Bibliography:

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