"It's all bullshit except the pain. The pain of hell. The burn from a lighted match increased a million times. Infinite. Now, ya don't fuck around with the infinite. There's no way you do that. The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart... your soul, the spiritual side. And ya know... the worst of the two is the spiritual." — Charlie (Harvey Keitel)
Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets is really the first picture to truly be infused with the Scorsese spirit that we’ve all come to know so well. His student film project, Who’s That Knocking At My Door, was filmed over the course of many years and took numerous different paths to get to where it wound up. Boxcar Bertha was a Roger Corman exploitation production that Marty used to learn how to film quickly and cost-effectively. But with Mean Streets, Scorsese really filmed what was deep within and used his background as the template for what would become a cinema classic.
Based on events that Scorsese experienced growing up in Little Italy, Mean Streets tells the story of an Italian American man, Charlie (Harvey Keitel), trying to move up the ladder in the local mafia.
He works for his uncle Giovanni (Cesare Danova) and collects debts around the neighbourhood. Charlie is blessed (or cursed) with a sense of compassion and is continually tolerant with his self-destructive friend Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), often to his own disadvantage. Charlie is also dating Johnny Boy’s epileptic cousin, Teresa (Amy Robinson), in secret because of her condition and the shame that comes with it.
Obviously much is made of Scorsese’s work with De Niro and this is the film that started it all. De Niro is absolutely astonishing as Johnny Boy and he inhabits the role with such wildness that it’s hard to like the character. He is insufferable, slippery, crooked, and unsophisticated. Johnny Boy is the block of cement that weighs Charlie down, he is the sin in Charlie’s life, and he is the inexorable reality of life on the tough streets.
But Mean Streets really isn’t about thugs and gangsters; it’s about sinfulness and kindness.
Take the film’s key words: “You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. And the rest is bullshit and you know it.” This Scorsese-spoken introduction serves as the skeleton on which the director mounts the flesh of his story. It is the spirituality of Charlie and the way in which he reconciles his almost absurd allegiance and tests the fires of hell by running his hand over a votive candle that captures us and draws us in.
Article comments
1 - Jen
Excellent piece, Jordan! I'm a huge fan of Scorsese & De Niro. Admittedly, this movie isn't my favorite but it really set up what was to come in his career. In Scorsese on Scorsese, I was so surprised when he mentioned that originally Keitel and De Niro's roles were to be reversed. Initially, I wondered if that would've meant that the film would've launched Keitel but De Niro's talent couldn't be denied and ultimately they were best suited to the roles they played.
You picked up on a lot of great points-- especially the music-- that film is like wall-to-wall music if I remember correctly (it's been a few years) and that still is one of his greatest inspirations and the Stones more than anyone. Though I'm not sure if you saw the Stones doc he made this year (Shine a Light)... whew, other than the first ten minutes where he and Mick were going back and forth with their egos, that was super dull for a guy who made The Last Waltz.
Anyway, I'm really enjoying your topic selection and keep up the stellar work!