Mean Streets: urban crime and social conflict

Life on Scorsese's Mean Streets: A realistic fictional film with a pseudo-documentary style all its own

How could a film that is supposed to be about New York City, shot on the streets of Los Angeles 'feel' so real, so truthful to these characters that aspire to be good, but fail? The pseudo-documentary style adopted by Mean Streets is one reason that the gangster film has such a strong sense of verisimilitude, despite this apparent contradiction. Even a student of film who knows the location 'truth' behind this historical cinematic production finds him or herself taken into the 'world' of the film, believing that he or she is transported into modern Little Italy, and the crimes and blood feuds that characterize its mean streets.

This is evident early on in the film, as its use of voice over to give articulation to otherwise inarticulate characters in street vernacular immediately suggest film has a documentary sensibility. The characters act like animals quite often, the voice over from afar explains and sets these brutal actions into a meaningful explanatory context and framework. These individuals would seem like thugs, if the voice over did not exist and provide moral guidance.

The famous opening voice over, "you don't make up for your sins in church; you do it in the streets; you do it at home. The rest is bulls-t, and you know it," is not simply cursing, its wording sets the tone for the theological context of the setting of Little Italy. This is a place where faith and context matters. An ethical Christian framework may seems to defy the life and appearance of the gangsters and made men, but these men aspire to such ideals, however imperfectly.

Unlike a documentary, realism in film and fiction subjects the protagonist to a central ethical dilemma. Charlie in particular is torn by a series of ethical obligations. He wants Johnny Boy to pay off his debt to a local loan shark. Doing so involves Charlie deeply in the neighborhood's dirty dealings, something he wished to avoid. Charlie wants to be respected like his uncle. His uncle is also a gangster, but seen by the neighborhood as a good man, who holds himself above the fray, above things like loansharking. Charlie wants to be a good Christian, too, and to help his girlfriend attain a better life for the sake of her failing health. Charlie actually wishes to be like a saint, but his environment prevents him. Johnny Boy is also torn between fulfilling his financial obligation to the shark, an unethical man, and fleeing -- an unethical act.

Both protagonist's divided natures and divided senses of duty to self and community, family and personal creed, is suggested in the construction of the film itself. Again, rather than conveying a seamless and linear narrative, the film evolves over a series of splices and jump cuts, leaving the viewer with a sense of uncertainty as to what is real and what is not real that the protagonists themselves often feel. The soundtrack futher creates a sense of coginitive dissonance, of sound and fury and loudness, as popular hits blare in the background.