Mean Streets (DVD)
Special Edition
APPROX. 112 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1973 - MPA RATING: R
" ...a gritty, one-of-a-kind, unromantic, down-and-dirty look at the streets of New York like no film had portrayed those streets and their people before.
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The opening credits flash over home movies of Charlie, his friends, and his family growing up. It's an inkling of the movie's content and an expression of things to come. "Mean Streets" is essentially like "The Godfather" in that it's a story of family; in Scorsese's case a family of friends. And the herky-jerky home movies of the introduction are not unlike the fitful look and progress of the main film itself.
The language and dialogue are matter-of-fact and truthful, some of it amusing ("Your left or my left?"), some of it profane, and much of it seemingly improvised, it's so lifelike. Ultimately, all the characters are petty crooks bumming around together, often acting like kids still playing in the streets. And the streets themselves are as authentic as they can be, Scorsese having filmed the whole movie in the actual New York City neighborhoods he knew. Period music--pop, rock, opera, and Italian--completes the picture of a time and place that are hard to forget, once a person has seen them portrayed so vividly.
Trivia: Look for Scorsese's mother as the woman on the landing. She played in other films by her son as well, as Tommy's mother in "Goodfellas," for instance, and Piscano's mother in "Casino." Also look for cameos by David and Robert Carradine as a drunk and the drunk's killer; and by Scorsese himself as Michael's flunky, Jimmy "Shorty" Shorts.
Video:
The entire film is exceptionally dark--dark rooms, dark alleys, dark nightclubs--something one has to get used to, but Warner engineers employ a relatively high bit rate and an enhanced, anamorphic transfer to obtain a good, smooth, fairly detailed picture. There is very little grain displayed on the 1.74:1 ratio screen that wasn't probably on the original print, and there are very few jittery lines. Colors are quite solid, with reds and blacks particularly deep. However, there is nothing that can be done with the overall soft nature of the images and object delineation, also probably on the original print.
Audio:
The Dolby Digital 1.0 audio is nothing to brag about, but it could be worse. The musical selections are, of course, taken from actual recordings of the time, and they vary in sound quality from one to another. But dialogue and other soundtrack effects come through more uniformly, all crisp and clear. Unfortunately, the voices are also somewhat hard, harsh, nasal, and constricted, with a small amount of background noise always present and a shimmer of noise around some of the dialogue as well. Put it this way: You'll have no trouble understanding what people are saying, but don't expect anything like state-of-the-art sound.
Extras:
There are only two serious extras on this "Special Edition," a limited audio commentary with director Martin Scorsese and actress Amy Robinson and a seven-minute vintage featurette, "Martin Scorsese Back on the Block." The commentary covers only two chapters of the movie, actually, but it is enlightening. The featurette was made at the time of the film's production and includes a walk by Scorsese and several of his friends through the neighborhoods where the film was made and where they grew up. The extras conclude with thirty-three scene selections and a widescreen theatrical trailer. English is the lone spoken language, but there are subtitles in English, French, and Spanish. The disc case came with no chapter insert.
Parting Thoughts:
One can see a progression in both content and style in Scorsese's three twentieth-century, New York gangster movies. In terms of content the films begin with petty hoods ("Mean Streets"), move on to mid-level gangsters ("Goodfellas"), and culminate in big-time mobsters ("Casino"). In terms of style, the movies go from grit to glitz. For me, it's "Goodfellas" in which the director hits his stride, but the other two movies consider one's attention, too. "Mean Streets," especially, is worth watching if only to see the genesis of Scorsese's technique and to see the forerunner of so many like-themed gangster films. These mean streets are well worth a visit.
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