Mean Streets (1973)

Directed by Martin Scorsese
Harvey Keitel, Robert DeNiro

At the risk of overstating how autobiographic this film is, Scorsese might as well have re-titled it My Streets. Many of the Little Italy locations were his childhood hangouts, he speaks Charlie’s (Keitel) interior monologue, and the delightfully eclectic soundtrack was culled from his personal record collection (half the film’s budget then went to clearing rights to the songs). Still, thank San Gennaro (during whose annual feast the film takes place) he didn’t keep the original title, “Season of the Witch” (which gets name-dropped right after a William Blake reference, how’s that for self-aggrandizing?). These friends are no literati gang though, and amidst the shenanigans of perpetual-adolescence all other name-dropping (aside from confusion over the term “mook”) signals alternately misogyny, racism and homophobia. This lashing out signals an immigrant community’s uneasy adjustment to fading family and religious rituals, and intimates the general crisis in masculinity that’s preoccupied Scorsese since. Mean Streets also marks DeNiro’s first (and funniest, save perhaps King of Comedy) collaboration with Scorsese, and the director’s most darkly funny (aside, perhaps, from Taxi Driver) wink-nudge out-Hitchcocking-Hitchcock cameo.

This review will appear in the program for The L Magazine's upcoming Summerscreen series.