Mean Streets (1973) ★★★★☆

When watching Martin Scorsese's first film Mean Streets, it almost immediately occurs to the viewer just how talented the legendary director is at placing music in his scenes. The same deft touch that exists in Goodfellas, Raging Bull, and Taxi Driver is seen in his first film in 1973. Starring Harvey Keitel and Robert DeNiro as two street toughs working numbers for a local bookie, we follow their journey as friends and colleagues in the rugged tight knit community of Little Italy. Charlie(Keitel) works and collects money for his uncle the bookie and his friend Johnny Boy(DeNiro) wants a job too. Charlie runs into different sets of problems surrounding his inability to date the women he wants to, because of his families judgment and the communities close tie nature. He struggles with the expectations those around him have of him and trying to find his place. He spends most of the film working around the screw-ups of Johnny Boy and keeps having to save him from tragedy. This is really all I'll say about the plot because Mean Streets is really about a great director's first attempt. It's rough around the edges regarding plot direction but shows great promise from a technical point of view.

Mean Streets is wonderfully shot and the fact that most of it was done on hand cameras forty two years ago speaks to the craft of the young director. Great shots of the New York skyline, communities, and naturalistic interactions between characters fill the scenes with authenticity and takes you away to that time and place. The dialogue is quick and at times muddled and tough to understand, this I feel was to add a realistic quality to the people living in Little Italy in the 1960's. We're shown Charlie's soft side in his romantic interactions with his girlfriend Teresa(Amy Robinson) who reminded me at times of Lorraine Brocco, and added a touch of vulnerability to an otherwise jagged and mania filled world. The atmosphere of Mean Streets is as prevalent as any Scorsese picture and fills the scenes with detail and vibrance and action. It's wonderful to see such a long history of work have a basis and foundation from which it was formed. There is an energy that he brings to the atmosphere of the picture and all of his work that followed that turned into his signature.

The film is technically well done but is rough around the edges, the editing wonderful and acting superb and on point. Mean Streets suffers from a lack of perfectionism and a crowded timeframe of like-themed films. It's a little sloppy, it's a little messy all that is to be expected of a first director's attempt at art. But Scorsese did a wonderful job showing the life of these characters in Little Italy, characters that in part he knew. There are just better films tackling similar subjects during the years preceding, proceeding and including the year it was released. But for what it was, in the context of all these years later, the film was made with great skill and heart and has stood the test of time in many people's minds.