Arts & Entertainment
YoungFellas: Mean Streets and the Origins of Scorsese, De Niro and Keitel
Martin Scorsese's 'Mean Streets' is an early example of the nuanced character studies that made him one of the most respected directors in American cinema.
In star-obsessed American cinema, there exist a few directors who are known by the average moviegoer. Martin Scorsese is one of these few.
His name on a film generally implies gritty portrayals of dark characters on the fringes of society – gamblers, gangsters, sociopaths, psychotics, and schizophrenics. But Scorsese has also put his signature filmic stamp on period pieces, musical documentaries, dark comedies and a Michael Jackson music video.
Still, it’s those gritty dramas about criminals or people on the edge that rank among Scorsese’s best for a reason. GoodFellas, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull are visceral, complex portraits of characters – sometimes real people - who by virtue of being real and realistic are neither fully good nor bad.
The birth of Scorsese’s multifaceted portrayals of society’s castoffs is Mean Streets. Low-level street criminals are not just archetypes presented in broad strokes in Mean Streets. Ambitious criminals are shown struggling with religious beliefs that conflict with their lifestyles, and “bad guys” aren’t written and acted that way just to provide a foil for the “good guy.” This approach was part of the realism that grew and transformed the art of American film of the 1970s. As much as Jaws, Star Wars, and The Godfather changed everything that came after, so did Scorsese. And he essentially started with Mean Streets, a film that includes notable performances by Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro before they were stars.
At the Bay Theater this weekend you can see the infancy of the great director’s art that culminated in a best director Oscar 33 years later. Scorsese won it for The Departed, a film strikingly similar to Mean Streets for its nuanced character study. In The Departed, he gives us a cop so far undercover he seems close to drowning while his own identity is carried away with the current, and in Mean Streets, he gives us the gangster, who struggles to reconcile his faith with his mafia lifestyle.
Mean Streets Bay Theatre Show Times are:
- Sunday at 6 p.m.
- Monday at 8 p.m.
- Wednesday at 8 p.m.
