In this, the first of many reviews culled from the current Warner Home Video DVD release of the complete Warner Bros.-distributed works of director Martin Scorsese, I will focus on Scorsese's first real cinematic masterpiece, a personal, prolific cult and critical classic known as MEAN STREETS. A Warner Bros. Pictures release that opened in New York, NY, on October 2, 1973, MEAN STREETS runs 112 minutes, and is rated R for strong violence, thematic material, profanity/racial slurs, some sexual content/nudity, and drug use.

It was the advice of actor John Cassavetes given to Martin Scorsese, after he directed the Roger Corman-produced movie "Boxcar Bertha," that gave wind to what would become the movie that announced Scorsese as one of our all-time greatest filmmakers: "You just spent a year of your life making a piece of sh-t. You're better than that! Go out and make something that comes from your heart." At the time, the screenplay for MEAN STREETS went under the alternate title of "Season of the Witch," which was eventually both a George A. Romero movie and the accompanying title of the third "Halloween" movie. Scorsese showed Cassavetes the script, and the actor/director urged the 30-year-old New Yorker to go ahead to and make this his next movie. And he did, changing the title to MEAN STREETS (in an homage to Raymond Chandler) and causing one of the first real gems of gritty, independently-filmed character drama, and of the movies that tended to shift the genre of gangster films toward not just the heat of the moment, but the fluidity and conflict of the antihero protagonists. And Scorsese really put pieces his life into this film, making it one of the most vital American movies of the 1970s, a feeling shared by the New York Times.

Scorsese and Mardik Martin both grew up in Little Italy, witnessing the claustrophobic hustle and bustle of their hometown, and they wanted to make a more blue-collar movie about organized crime after they felt cheated by the operatic and somewhat exaggerated presentation of mobsters in Francis Coppola's "The Godfather." Scorsese and Martin described the movie as bullsh-t, and Martin once said "It didn't seem to be about the gangsters we knew, the petty ones you see around. We wanted to tell the story about real gangsters." To get the proper sense for the autobiographic exploits they wanted to convey in the movie they intended to create, the duo had penned the entire script whilst crusing the streets of this Brooklyn district and immersing in the scenery, viewing and hearing the many sights and sounds offered, then finding a spot to park and jot down their observations and their ideas. The script originally was an expansion of Scorsese's first movie, "Who's That Knocking at My Door?" and it retained the setting, and this movie eventually caught the attention of a young actor named Robert De Niro, who grew up in the same area where Martin and Mardik lived, and had accepted the offer to play any of the four main male roles in the movie, although he eventually got the most showy part, and it became a breakout performance.

Harvey Keitel (the star of Scorsese's "Knocking") narrates the internal voice of his own character, Charlie Cappa, in the first lines of the film, easily one of the most memorable opening phrases I've ever had the chance of hearing in any movie I've seen up to this 20-year-long standpoint in my life: "You don't make up for your sins in church…you do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullsh-t, and you know it." Cappa lives in Little Italy, and he's trying to retain his faith in Catholicism and acting like a responsible man, particularly St. Francis. But it's hard to be a saint in the city, particularly New York City, where the climate is being shifted by the dealing and abusing of drugs, the appearance of gays and black people in a mostly Italian-American environment, the attitudes adopted post-Vietnam, and Charlie himself is lured in by temptations of both sex and drugs (only alcohol). Every once in a while, he tries to reconcile with his sins by touching the flames from candles, tempting the fires of Hell, and thus trying to seek some sort of penance outside the ennui of the church's typical "10 Hail Marys and 10 Our Fathers."

His uncle Giovanni (Cesare Danova) is the mob mogul of Little Italy, and Charlie makes most of his living helping collect imbursements from people who owe Giovanni. One such person is a luckless restaurant owner who is behind his payments and is constantly betrayed by one of his waiters, but it spells out a potential hope for Charlie, primed to run this restaurant and strengthen his status in Little Italy whilst he eventually focuses his life towards his religion. But there's two different sides to the life he leads and the one he wants to lead, and he will eventually learn that he can't blend the both of them and simply face the future.

Charlie balances both personal responsibilities with outside, especially in his undying friendship and desire to help save the most free-spirited and troubled man in the Bronx, "Johnny Boy" Civello (De Niro). Johnny Boy is a flamboyant and reckless young man who gambles money from loan sharks he never ever pays back, only this time he crosses paths with Michael Longo (Richard Romanus), a business-concerned loan shark who has a comraderie with Charlie and fellow wise guy Tony DeVienazo (David Proval), but is running out of patience in Johnny Boy, whose life threatens to drag down Charlie's hopes and ambitions, particularly now that Charlie has decided that he might settle down at the insistence of Johnny's spasmodic cousin Teresa (Amy Robinson), who has been seeing Charlie and feels hardly any love and respect for her wayward relative. The three of them in the end try to escape the neighborhood after Johnny insults Michael deliberately and pulls a gun on him.

Scorsese shows a flair for creating the perfect atmosphere in the movie without leaning too much on a seriously artistic pomposity. Never once are the muted lighting tones and hazy aura an act of someone who takes style as merely a necessity, but as a way of enhancing every inch of the scenery. Never do you get taken out of the moment when you find out that most of the interiors used in the movie were actually in L.A., but instead you contend that Little Italy is indeed this kind of imposing setting. He takes the camera and covers his world with assurance and passion, getting the most out of the nooks and crannies in basically every spot.

Take for instance the scene where Charlie, Johnny, Tony and their friend Jimmy (Lenny Scaletta) visit a pool hall run by the robust Joey (George Memmoli). The scene starts out humorously, with Charlie blessing the pool cues and the overhead lamp of the people surrounding Joey's pool table. Jimmy in particular has money from a bet that he needs to collect from Joey, but the juvenile Johnny Boy aggravates Joey to the point where he refuses to give money to Jimmy and insults him face to face, saying "We don't pay mooks!" "You can’t call me a mook," Jimmy fires back, thus arising the ire of Joey, who decks him in the face. A full-on tussle erupts between both camps of New York wise guys. Johnny, who started in actuality instigated the hostility in the first place, an awkward karate fighter who ends up fending off Joey's butch patrons with a broken cue on top of a table. Charlie is knocked out and left mostly in a state of lifeless injury. And Tony is taken for a ride around the bar by a couple ruffians, with the camera effortlessly panning around and following them as they turn every corner and corner every turn. This whole sequence is a masterful stroke of brilliance where Scorsese relies on the setting, the shooting, the choreographed performances, and the sound of the Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman" all gelling together in complete unison with each other. Scorsese crafted one of his first timeless scenes with this one.

This is also where we see Martin Scorsese getting the most out of the New York world. Most filmmakers have a certain pride in where they come from, and so they portray their homeland in the most loving fashion imaginable. Scorsese is a man who knows how to film New York more than anyone other director imaginable. The Lower East Side never seemed as fascinating as it does here. The Feast of St. Gennaro looks great as it colors the setting with festivity. The nighttime beauty of the urban jungle is evocative. The point-of-views and dollies are always stellar, such as when Johnny is walking down the street and eventually gets angry at a passerby. And whereas the movie relates more to a few particular days in the life of the main characters, and doesn’t rely on typical plot and narrative structures, the motives of the characters seem all the more natural and the people in this movie come off like the kind you might have seen growing up in old New York City. That's how Scorsese lived it, a man who defied accepting the life of a priest himself to become a filmmaker.

All the characters in this movie have a distinct sense of themselves and their place in the surroundings. Charlie himself is an angel fluttering between Heaven and Hell, unable to will himself away from the temptations that Catholicism forbids yet knows enough about his faith, the honesty of the church and of himself to try and make some sort of segue way in his life so that he can die with forgiveness. Charlie lives in a state of total dissatisfaction, especially in the opening shots of the film, where he walks into a church admitting in his mind that he's grown way too accustomed to the usual sentence of prayers bestowed onto him for repentance, and he seeks a more private punishment that will teach him about where he will be going if he seeks to become a sinner. Whenever Charlie touches the fire of the votive candle at the altar (Scorsese was once an altar boy), he feels the guilt and thus feels the pain of eternal damnation, or the "infinite" pain of Hell. Scorsese makes the wise decision to outline the world of Charlie in the most alluringly sleazy of all colors: red. It's his way of showing that Charlie is indeed a man who lives in sin, and there's no getting around the impurity of the things in Charlie's head as he mingles with the exotic dancers, forgoes sobriety, and beds the cousin of his best friend.

It's easy to view Tony’s joint as the palace of peccadillo for Charlie, especially in two of this film's establishing shots of a red-tinted barroom setting where Charlie is seen carrying on and partaking in the vices around him. The first is a trademark slow-motion sequence where Charlie struts his way into the bar, as the camera follows him from behind, getting into the groove of the rock music fueling the bar, promptly saying hello to all of his friends, in taking shots of strong alcohol, looking upon the topless dancers and eventually joining them onstage. When one of the dancers he notices is indeed a black woman named Diane (Jeannie Bell), he sees no sort of reason not to feel attracted to her. However, later on in the film, when he asks Diane out on a date for Chinese food, he can't act upon his actions for fear that being seen with a "melanzana" will ruin his status in the village. The second is at the welcoming home party of a former Nam soldier (Harry Northup), and a sequence set impeccably to the sounds of The Chips' novelty number "Rubber Biscuit," where we see a plastered Charlie from the chest-up wandering around the bar going once again through the motions of greetings and drinking and getting hosed with soda guns, only he has had too much for himself to withstand has become punch-drunk as well. He eventually ends up falling down, with the camera strapped around his torso following him every step of the way, so that when he falls, the camera does too, we see him vertically on the ground. These are truly cinematic moments that have inspired countless filmmakers today.

As much as Scorsese, who wowed many if not all in 1973 with his stylistic cinematic charisma and power, Keitel and De Niro are the most vital assets of "Mean Streets." It's easy to give Scorsese so much credit for the faculty and visual force in this movie that he commits, but this as much as this was Scorsese's pivotal early moment, it was the same for both Keitel and De Niro, who offer the sort of deep, humble conviction that translates to both distinctive characterizations of impressive magnitude and an improvised rapport that gives the two performers some real raw power. How can you not deny the wit and honesty that went into the scene in the alley of Tony's bar where Johnny confesses his plight to Charlie, the brotherly affection the duo share as they spar with garbage pail lids, or the intensity when Johnny insults Charlie and the duo spar. There is a counterbalance to be admired between the presence of both Charlie and Johnny, in that Charlie can't help but be drawn to Johnny by the fact that he's a volatile human deity who is the life of his controlled environment, and Johnny looks up to Charlie as sort of priestly and sensible, personalities he lacks but give him a greater sense of being when in the presence of Charlie. However, as Giovanni so puts it, "honorable men go with honorable men," and to him Johnny Boy is simply a nuisance. As for Teresa, he looks upon her epilepsy as a sickness of the brain, and indeed epilepsy was an ancient symbol many people took for demonic possession.

Harvey Keitel makes a damn good impression here, embodying every tormented and tempted impulse of Charlie with a steadfast dedication. There's an underlying sense of self-loathing to the personality of Charlie, and this makes most of the interactions with the people in his life all the more laced with turmoil and tragedy. That Keitel displays this facet as well as all the others that come with the baggage both inside and outside in his NY life is a testament to a man who understands what it means as an actor to develop a craft and to let himself inside every single dimension possible, thus making every action and every reflex all the more precise. And with Robert De Niro, a man who indeed has become Scorsese's most reliable leading actor and confidante, he makes Johnny Boy the most beloved fool in the history of such street-based sagas. There's really no way to explain what is running through this prankster's mind when he does what he does, because he does things without even so much as a second thought that he just becomes a freewheeling freeloader. He destroys mailboxes just for a cheap thrill, he courts and flirts with women like they are prizes, he wastes copious sums of money on a whim and lies about it, and he abuses the trust of people around him. But Johnny is really a man who, like Charlie, hurts on the inside. He has the confidence, as in when we see him escorting two ladies as he walks into Joey's, but not the direction, and he turns to Charlie for it. De Niro is just simply a supremely tour de force personality, and even at the earliest stage in his career, you could sense he was on his way to complete greatness.

But even then, the rest of the cast cannot be regarded as weak for a moment. Richard Romanus is stellar, although I'm sure many like me might regard him as the brother of Mike Damone. Indeed, a comical scene where Michael is approached by a couple of kids seeking firecrackers brings to mind Damone selling Blue Oyster Cult tickets to minors (and it leads to an amusing scene where Mike, Charlie and Tony go see "The Searchers" at the local theater). He's easily granted a level of humanity and dignity that makes him more than just a ruthless peddler and instead just another respectable member of society. It's all the more surprising when we see him in the end doing what he must after the final straw is broken by the suicidal Johnny Boy, but it's fitting. David Proval, as Tony, also has one instantly memorable moment where he interacts with a tiger. He holds his own amongst the cast, and contributes a nice supporting role as well. Amy Robinson has a rather underscored but well-performed role as Teresa, as does Cesare Denova's Giovanni. If you like playing "Spot the Guest Appearances," look out for David Carradine (he was in "Boxcar Bertha" and was ready for "Kung Fu" cult stardom) in one sequence as a drunken barroom patron, half-brother Robert Carradine in the same scene, Marty's mama Catherine Scorsese as a old woman who shows up in a pivotal moment with Charlie, Johnny & Teresa, and a certain director who is seen as a gunman in an automobile.

The soundtrack contains no new score music, but instead a wild assortment of songs both classic American rock and classic Italian vocal. Scorsese himself scoured his own personal record collection as well as what he heard in the Mulberry and Mott streets to make the perfect mix of previously released music, all of which sound like freshly spinned vinyl. This was entirely unfamiliar with American cinema at that particular moment in time, the marriage of active film images with period music, but nowadays it's what drives basically every mainstream movie, and it was originally a Scorsese trademark. You get R&B of both the Rolling Stones and the Ronettes variety. The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" was used as the main titles song way before "Dirty Dancing," and it works especially well as we see established home movie footage that look obviously like they had been taped before shooting began. The Stones' "Jumping Jack Flash" works well as the swaggering introduction to Johnny Boy, and I'm pretty sure I already mentioned "Please Mr. Postman" and "Rubber Biscuit." Other selections include two songs by Renato Carosone, two from Giuseppe de Stefano, two Eric Clapton tracks (one solo, one with Cream), Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love," The Miracles' "Mickey's Monkey," Little Anthony & The Imperials' "Those Oldies But Goodies," and many others.

As many important film critics and Scorsese historians seemed to have noted, MEAN STREETS was the first assured masterpiece in Scorsese’s canon. "Who's That Knocking at My Door" was merely the seed in the tree which sprouted to give way to all of Scorsese's most adored and analyzed movies, from this one to "Taxi Driver" to "Raging Bull" to "Goodfellas" and Gangs of New York. This was the work of a man who had won the acclaim of a generation of hardened film fanatics, and whose gritty and hardened style would rub off on a whole other legion of popular filmmakers, from Abel Ferrara to Darren Aronofsky. MEAN STREETS is a movie laced with intense depictions of guilt, deliverance, responsibility, and street violence, but is not without a sense of humor, two breakthrough leading actors, a set of decent performances, and the vision of a persistent, competent filmmaker. And it was shot in the natural environment of the director in a guerilla style of such awesome magnitude and authenticity. If you haven't had the chance to see it yet, the readily available special edition DVD release is a must rent or a must buy. MEAN STREETS is a great American film that never lets down even today, and the self-reflective arrival of a prolific film fanatic turned filmmaker.

After previously getting released on DVD in a version that wasn't even worth a lick of p*ss to own, it's great to see that the newly minted digital transfer on this particular "Special Edition" is a much better way to see the movie than ever before. This movie looks so stellar, it's a supplement in and of itself. A film restoration buff in the good sense, Scorsese himself would marvel at the magic performed on a low-budget movie like this. In an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, enhanced for widescreen TVs, this beats any previous full-frame VHS release any day. There is a newfound richness to this movie that I never thought imaginable. Sharpness/contrast was damn near excellent for a movie of its age, only the limitations posed by the locations keeping the look from being as pristine as it could have possibly been, but a wonderful stroke of beauty nonetheless accomplished. Edge enhancement was fortunately minimal, some grain cropped up in darker footage, and whereas any previous edition of the movie was marred by an assault of specks and scratches and other such inadequacies, this one is just a wee bit close to crystal clear.

And the colors are as fleshed out as can be of a movie from its vantage point can become. It's a 1970s film, but you'd be surprised that the interiors seen in Tony’s bar can be so f*cking striking. The artistic decision by Scorsese to awash most of the movie's bar scenes in a glowing red tint is rendered perfect in this transfer, and it makes the whole movie feel much more richer than sin than it had ever been before. Flesh tones were strikingly on the ball, and facial detail never flagged for an instance. Blackness levels were as tight as can be, never inky or blotched, but, like I said, had been grafted with a level of grain that must have been directly from the film stock. The sights of the Feast of St. Gennaro look altogether enrapturing when captured on this transfer. I have to say that when I saw just how much energy Warner Bros. took in investing on a fresh DVD print as this, I felt as if I just saw real magic happen right in front of me. Way to go!

However, the new Dolby Digital 2.0 monaural mix remains, whilst a significant boost from the original DVD release, a minor letdown. Given that most of the music was indeed of needlepoint-dropped LP quality and taken from Scorsese’s own vinyl record collection, the pop songs exhibit a lot of force in the mix despite a lot of them contain a modicum of roughness, most noticeably the sounds of "Be My Baby" at the opening, which doesn't sound like a remastered take for an instance. However, the Rolling Stones songs in particular have what it takes to rise above their limitations, perhaps because their music wasn't exactly as old as the Ronettes. Both "Tell Me" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash" sound really well. However, considerable amounts of dubbed-in sound effects and ADR voice-overs seem not in tandem with the action or the lip movement of the characters. Both elements seem to suffer at times from the elements of age bearing their toll, as some sound effects take on a bit of distortion and some dialogue often comes out as unclear. However, it beats having to listen to the previous mono soundtrack on the first DVD release I rented, if only because there's more to savor in terms of the clarity. Optional subtitles are in English, French or Spanish. What...no Italian?!

When it comes to DVD extras, most of the best examples come from Mr. Scorsese. I want to begin small, with the theatrical trailer in anamorphic widescreen and mono stereo, and a vintage 1973 promotional short for the movie called Martin Scorsese: Back on the Block, which is about 7 minutes long. It's not really a making-of documentary, but instead features clips of the movie edited together with real footage of Scorsese and two childhood friends revisiting their old stomping grounds, treading past familiar neighborhoods, talking about the world they inhabited in dubbed interview soundbites, and even visiting ol’ Catherine Scorsese for some food. Throughout this piece, you meet the people and the places which so inspired Scorsese for the depiction of Little Italy as presented in the screenplay, and you hear these three individuals personally explain the significance of the movie to the lives they knew. This is quite a find.

The only other extra is a new scene-specific audio commentary featuring Martin Scorsese and Amy Robinson, which is accessed only via the "Special Features" menu because it is so scene-specific. Scorsese himself doesn't so much provide commentary as he does map out the points in time in where his ideas came from, how the movie came intro fruition, what personal details he squeezed into the movie and even his past excursions into directing. Scorsese provides valuable comments on the realism he exhibited in his characters as well as his decision to shoot the movie to the sounds of the music he appreciated. Unfortunately, I kept wishing he would indulge me into what it was like working with Keitel and De Niro, as well as providing any significantly deep thoughts on to how they fit into his life and film career. I could've also appreciated more information about how much different it was in the 1970s shooting a movie in New York on a small budget and the many ways he went about it. But even then, not a single thread of his recollections for this movie seem to be of worthlessness, and even though he only has so little to say, it's so well-said that credit must be deserved. Robinson shows up in sporadic moments talking about her character of Teresa, her involvement with Marty, the work with the performers, and the vigorous cinematic world of the decade. I particularly was fond of the anecdote she spun during the scene where Johnny Boy punches Teresa and drives her into a seizure, and the way Scorsese held onto his determination even in a real life apartment complex full of screaming tenants. However, be advised that despite a 112-minute running time for the movie, the sum of both participants' comments only equal about 81-and-1/2 minutes, with scenes such as the Vietnam veteran’s party noticeably skipped over.

MEAN STREETS was the one of the greatest classic independent films of yore, and it rose Martin Scorsese to a prominence that was unspoken by a lot, but felt by so many over the 31 years since it was first released. Both connoisseurs of the director and fans of great American cinema will definitely want to pick this up, but I wholly recommend you purchase it alongside "Goodfellas," "After Hours," "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," and "Who's That Knocking at My Door?" in the recent DVD boxed set "The Martin Scorsese Collection," since it retails much cheaper than it would if you were to individually buy each of these movies, especially since the new two-disc release of "Goodfellas" is perhaps the greatest buy of all five titles. But not to take away anything from MEAN STREETS, of course.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age