Mean Streets (1973)

          “I swear to Jesus Christ on the goddamned cross, that kid thinks he’s makin’ a jerkoff outta me, I’m gonna break his leg!” That’s what loan shark Michael (Richard Romanus) hisses at one point in Martin Scorsese’s breakthrough movie, Mean Streets, and the line encompasses nearly everything that distinguishes Mean Streets—indeed, it encompasses nearly everything that defines Scorsese as a kingpin of New York crime cinema. The line blends Catholicism with macho swagger, vulgarity, violence, and the moral code of the Italian-American underworld. All of those themes pervade Mean Streets, which was Scorsese’s first “real” feature after helming the grungy black-and-white indie Who’s That Knocking at My Door? (1967) and the lurid Roger Corman production Boxcar Bertha (1972). With its bravura camerawork, naturalistic performances, and thundering soundtrack, Mean Streetsput Scorsese on the map.

          The picture was also his first collaboration with actor Robert De Niro, because even though the star of Mean Streets is actually Harvey Keitel—who also had the top role in Who’s That Knocking at My Door?—De Niro gives the picture’s most flamboyant performance, and his live-wire energy is the film’s pulse.

          Written by Scorsese and Mardik Martin, the movie tells a simple story about Charlie (Keitel), a low-level mobster whose ascension through the Mafia’s ranks is impeded by the destructive behavior of his best friend, Johnny Boy (De Niro). Arrogant, immature, and impulsive, Johnny Boy flagrantly rips off one loan shark after another, displays contempt for underworld authority figures, and relies on Charlie—whose uncle holds a position of power in the Mafia—to bail him out of trouble whenever things get too intense. Complicating the dynamic between the men is Charlie’s romantic involvement with Johnny Boy’s cousin, Teresa (Amy Robinson). As the movie progresses, Charlie wrestles with his various obligations—to Johnny Boy, to Teresa, to his uncle, and to God (since he’s a devout Catholic), trying and failing to be everything to everyone.

          Mean Streets is a movie of unassailably noble intensions, because Scorsese is after nothing less than defining the soul of a community. By examining various characters who represent different facets of New York mob life, the director ponders the enigma of men who treat each other with honor while stealing from the rest of the world. Furthermore, Scorsese’s camerawork and direction of actors are consistently remarkable. The camera whips and whirls around scenes to accentuate the volatility of situations; the quick editing and imaginative use of pop songs and classical music on the soundtrack gives the movie a unique rhythm; and the performances all feel so naturalistic that many scenes seem as if they were improvised. All of Scorsese’s preternatural gifts are on full display here.

          Unfortunately, so are his weaknesses.

          The depiction of women in the film is outrageously sexist (both by male characters and by Scorsese, who needlessly includes leering nude scenes); the show-offy auteur flourishes, like scoring a fight scene with the peppy Motown song “Please, Mr. Postman,” are fun but distracting; and the constant barrage of “fucks” within dialogue gets tiresome. The biggest shortcoming of Mean Streets, however, is also the film’s key virtue—the fact that the picture is an anthropological study of assholes. Dimensional though they may be, the characters in this film are still inherently awful people, criminals driven by greed, id, and a lack of social conscience. Scorsese captures these people better than anyone else, but the question remains whether low-rent scumbags actually deserve this sort of close attention.

Mean Streets: GROOVY

Eagle’s Wing (1979)

          There’s a good reason you’ve likely never heard of a Western called Eagle’s Wing: It tells such a diffuse and underdeveloped story that even with dynamic actors Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston starring, the picture is painfully dull. On the plus side, the movie looks gorgeous—director Anthony Harvey and cinematographer Billy Williams arrange visuals with artful precision. Yet the only thing more dispiriting than Harvey’s lethargic pacing is the director’s inability to fuse his narrative’s various strands. Eagle’s Wing bounces around between vignettes involving Plains Indians, white fur traders, a displaced Irish priest and his sister, and the denizens of a Mexican hacienda. The various characters eventually converge, more or less, but it’s a long haul getting to the point where the story feels unified. Worse, since the heart of the piece is really just a simplistic macho duel between an Indian (Waterston) and a trader (Sheen), everything else feels like a distraction.
          Before moving onto anything else, by the way, it’s worth noting that Wasterston’s casting as a Native American isn’t as ridiculous as it might seem. Yes, there were plenty of Native actors would could have played his role, and yes, Waterston is a Northeastern WASP, but with his lean physicality, massive eyebrows, prominent nose, thin eyes, and generally sober demeanor, the actor cuts a striking figure.

          The plot isn’t worth describing in detail except to say that the Indian and the trader begin their duel over possession of a horse, and then deepen their conflict once the Indian abducts the priest’s sister. (English actress Caroline Langrishe, playing the girl, lends grit and loveliness but has virtually nothing to do except suffer and watch while male characters advance the narrative.) The reason the plot isn’t worth describing is that it doesn’t seem to be of particular importance to the filmmakers—Eagle’s Wing is primarily a mood piece about desperation, obsession, and survival. However, these themes are not dramatized effectively. Many of Sheen’s sequences, for instance, comprise the actor soliloquizing in order to explain what his character is thinking. (It’s a rare movie that makes one wish Sheen would stop talking, given that he possesses one of Hollywood’s most mesmerizing voices.)

          Further, the film is littered with wordless scenes in which nothing of significance happens, or in which significant events are shown at excessive length—such as an interminable scene of Sheen’s character breaking a horse. Virtually the only stretch of the film that sustains interest is the long opening sequence featuring Harvey Keitel; he and Sheen play bickering partners until Keitel’s character meets the business end of an arrow. Nonetheless, if you’re able to groove on a movie simply for the beauty of its visuals, you might be able to do so with Eagle’s Wing, at least for a while, because the film offers an endless procession of elegantly minimalistic images sculpted from subtle textures of color and light.

Eagle’s Wing: FUNKY

That’s the Way of the World (1975)

          A behind-the-scenes story about the music business starring Harvey Keitel as a principled record producer, That’s the Way of the World isn’t a great film by any measure, but it vividly evokes a specific era, and it addresses meaningful themes related to the eternal conflict between art and commerce. Plus, the movie’s got great jams courtesy of R&B group Earth, Wind & Fire, the members of which portray an ersatz act called the Group—EWF lays down smooth grooves including “Reasons,” “Shining Star,” and “That’s the Way of the World.” Keitel plays Coleman Buckmaster (one of the best character names ever, just sayin’), a successful producer known for creating imaginative arrangements. When we meet Coleman, he’s deep into sessions with the Group, a black ensemble making densely atmospheric tracks. Coleman considers the Group artistically important, but his backers don’t dig the sound. Execs order Coleman to set the Group aside and work on a single by an all-white vocal group called the Pages, whose style is so square they make the Carpenters seem hip by comparison. (In a great flourish, the leader of the Pages is played by Bert Parks, who spent years serenading Miss America during televised beauty contests.) Coleman agrees to cut the vocal act’s record, planning to get the job done quickly so he can return to the Group, but things get complicated when Coleman starts romancing Pages singer Velour (Cynthia Bostick).

          Although this set-up has plenty of dramatic potential, writer Robert Lipsyte and director/producer Sig Shore devote more energy to capturing details than to generating narrative momentum. As such, there’s lots of great stuff depicting the flow of recording sessions and the unethical practices of the record business. In one memorable scene, an executive says it takes “payola, layola, viola, and drugola” to get a song on the radio; elsewhere, Coleman speaks for artists throughout history by asking an anxious financier, “Do you want it good or do you want it now?” Shore, who produced the Superfly movies, doesn’t break any new ground with this, his directorial debut—his work falls somewhere between perfunctory and underwhelming. As for Keitel, among the most quixotic actors in Hollywood history, he delivers one of his patented non-performances. He’s mildly charming in some moments and fiery in a few others, but mostly he’s so internalized that many nuances fail to register. Still, these are relatively minor complaints given how interesting That’s the Way of the World is from start to finish. Sure, there’s a kitsch factor (Keitel roller-skates!), but the picture is hard to beat as a travelogue through a world seldom seen by outside eyes.

That’s the Way of the World: GROOVY

The Duellists (1977)

          After establishing himself as a formidable director of television commercials, Ridley Scott made the leap to feature filmmaking with this handsome adaptation of a Joseph Conrad short story titled “The Duel,” which was based on real people who existed in Napoleonic France. A small-scale drama exploring huge themes of honor, military conduct, nationalism, and personal obsession, the movie boasts gorgeous costuming and production design, impressively evoking early 19th-century Europe even though the film was made for less than $1 million. (In fact, budget constraints probably added to the verisimilitude, because Scott shot the movie on existing locations instead of sets.) From start to finish, The Duellists offers a feast of artful images, with Scott emulating the lighting style of 19th-century paintings and treating every shot as an opportunity to demonstrate his gifts for pictorial composition. Clearly, Scott’s visual acumen impressed many, since the picture won the Best Debut Film at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival and helped Scott secure his career-making job as the director of Alien (1979). Alas, for all its elegance, The Duellists is a hopelessly cold film. The motivations of the characters are dramatized well enough, but human feeling is smothered by meticulous imagery—at this point in his career, Scott seemingly lacked the skills needed to extract passion from his players.

          In his defense, the movie was badly miscast. Originally set to star Oliver Reed and Michael York, the picture instead features Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel. Both actors are so inherently modern (and so inherently American) that they seem like they’re playing dress-up. Another problem is that the story is an intellectual exercise rather than a proper drama. When the movie begins, savage French officer Feraud (Keitel) skewers an aristocratic opponent in a duel. Another officer, d’Hubert (Carradine), is sent to arrest Feraud, but Feraud—who is obsessed with dueling—invents a slight as pretense for drawing d’Hubert into a fight. And so begins decades of on-again/off-again combat between the men, with their battles ending in draws until a peculiar resolution puts an end to their lifelong quarrel. Scott captures the surfaces of this strange story, but never the inner lives of the characters, so the question underlying the narrative—asking why one man seeks to foment conflict while the other seeks to resolve it—receives only perfunctory attention. As a result, The Duellists is quite dull and repetitive, which is a shame, since it’s easy to imagine a full-blooded version of the same material casting a powerful spell. Nonetheless, The Duellists is interesting to watch as the opening act of a great directorial career, and it holds many delights for fans of pictorial splendor.

The Duellists: FUNKY

Welcome to L.A. (1976)

          After making a pair of schlocky horror flicks, writer-director Alan Rudolph finally got to make a proper film with the help of A-list auteur Robert Altman, who served as Rudolph’s producer for Welcome to L.A.Given the “Robert Altman presents” imprimatur, however, it’s hard not to perceive Welcome to L.A. as Altman Lite, especially since Rudolph emulates his producer’s filmmaking style by presenting a loosely intertwined mosaic of cynical stories. Yet while Altman’s best ensemble movies sparkle with idiosyncratic humor, Welcome to L.A. is monotonous, a downbeat slog comprising vapid Los Angelenos doing rotten things for unknowable reasons.

          The character holding everything together is Carroll Barber (Keith Carradine), a self-absorbed rich kid who fancies himself a songwriter and who spends the movie accruing sexual conquests. Some of the uninteresting people orbiting Carroll are Ann (Sally Kellerman), a pathetic real-estate agent given to humiliating displays of unrequited affection; Karen (Geraldine Chaplin), a spacey housewife who spends her days riding around the city in taxis; Linda (Sissy Spacek), a ditzy housekeeper who works topless; Nona (Lauren Hutton), a kept woman who takes arty photographs; and Susan (Viveca Lindfors), an insufferably pretentious talent representative in love with a much-younger man. Harvey Keitel and Denver Pyle appear as well, though Rudolph is clearly much more interested in the feminine mystique than the inner lives of men.

          Rudolph structures the film like a concept album, using music to bridge vignettes, and this arty contrivance doesn’t work. Part of the problem is that singer-songwriter Richard Baskin, who provides the song score and also performs several numbers onscreen, prefers the song form of the shapeless dirge. Which, come to think of it, is not a bad way to describe Welcome to L.A. While Rudolph obviously envisioned some sort of Grand Statement about the ennui of modern city dwellers, he instead crafted an interminable recitation of trite themes. Worse, Rudolph employs juvenile flourishes such as having characters stare at the camera, as if viewers will somehow see into the characters’ souls. Sorry, but isn’t providing insight the filmmaker’s job? (Available as part of the MGM Limited Collection on Amazon.com)

Welcome to L.A.: LAME

Blue Collar (1978)

          After making his name with the incendiary screenplay for Taxi Driver(1974), Paul Schrader capitalized on his Hollywood heat by setting up his directorial debut, Blue Collar. (Schrader co-wrote the script with his brother, Leonard, from source material by Sydney A. Glass.) A tough morality play about corruption worming its way through an auto company and the labor union supposedly protecting the company’s workers, Blue Collar echoes the 1954 classic On the Waterfront, but it has an unmistakably ’70s patina of drugs, racial tension, sex, and vulgarity.

          The story follows three friends whose frustration with their working conditions at an auto plant reaches a boiling point when they realize their disreputable union reps are making side deals with management. The trio breaks into the union office, hoping to steal several thousand dollars they believe is hidden there, but all they get is petty cash. And that’s when the story gets really interesting: Union officials claim tens of thousands of dollars were stolen, setting an insurance-settlement scam in motion, so the workers-turned-thieves realize they have an opportunity to blackmail their oppressors. How this bold maneuver affects the three men leads to a climax of unusual complexity and intensity.

          Considering this was his first movie, Schrader is remarkably assured behind the camera, using a classical camera style that’s neither showy nor timid; abetted by cinematographer Bobby Byrne, Schrader gives the picture a look as gritty as the assembly line on which the main characters labor every day. The blues-inflected soundtrack, including original music by the great Jack Nitzsche, suits the material perfectly, and in fact the whole movie feels like a raw soul record come to life: When characters sit around a local dive, swigging beer and bitching about their troubles, Blue Collar offers a window into a secret world.

          Yet Schrader’s two-fisted storytelling would be for naught if the movie lacked powerhouse performances, and, luckily, the three leads deliver. Yaphet Kotto, working his singular mix of blazing anger and world-weary sarcasm, is compelling in every scene. Harvey Keitel, slickly translating his Noo Yawk edge to a volatile Midwestern vibe, is equally potent as the conscience of the group. And Richard Pryor is explosive, leaving any idea that he’s merely a funnyman in the dust. Never this good in a movie before or afterward, he channels deep veins of indignation and resentment into an unforgettable characterization. (Available as part of the Universal Vault Series on Amazon.com)

Blue Collar: RIGHT ON