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

Born to Win (1971)

It’s impossible to completely dismiss Born to Win, a would-be comedy about heroin addiction, even though the film is a disaster from a tonal perspective and not especially satisfying from a narrative perspective, because the film’s saving graces include gritty performances by several actors and a great sense of place. So, while Born to Win is laughable compared to the same year’s The Panic in Needle Park, a truly harrowing take on the same subject matter, Born to Win isn’t an outright dud. George Segal stars as J, a former hairdresser who has fallen into petty crime as a means of supporting his habit. Over the course of the story, J embarks on a new romance with Parm (Karen Black), a rich girl with a taste for dangerous adventure, and he gets into a complicated hassle with his dealer, Vivian (Hector Elizondo). The romantic stuff with Parm defies logic right from the beginning—Parm discovers J trying to steal her car, but instead of calling the police, she takes him to bed. Huh? The drug-culture material is more believable, especially when two cops (one of whom is played by a young Robert De Niro) coerce J into helping them entrap Vivian. In general, the seedier the scene in question, the more watchable Born to Win becomes. For instance, one of the best sequences involves J sweet-talking a mobster’s wife by pretending he wants sex, when in fact he’s simply trying to enter the mobster’s apartment for purposes of robbery. Segal’s not the right actor for this story—he’s too charming and urbane—but it’s interesting to imagine the circumstances by which a character fitting Segal’s persona might have fallen into such desperation. Had Born to Win focused on J’s descent (and had the filmmakers not opted for such a glib treatment of addiction), the picture could have had impact. Alas, director/co-writer Ivan Passer fumbles, badly, by attempting to merge black comedy with inner-city tragedy, and his undisciplined storytelling is exacerbated by a truly horrible music score. Predictably, De Niro (whose role is inconsequential) and Elizondo fare best in this milieu, while Black and costar Paul Prentiss barely register. Yet the real star of the movie, if only by default, is New York City, with the dirty streets of Manhattan amplifying the film’s implied theme of lost souls getting chewed up by an unforgiving universe.

Born to Win: FUNKY

Jennifer on My Mind (1971)

          Here’s the premise of this would-be comedy for the druggie generation: After a with-it dude’s far-out girlfriend dies of a heroin overdose, he spends several days hiding her body in his apartment (and then his car) because he thinks he was responsible for her death and doesn’t want to get in trouble. Are you laughing yet? No? Well, guess what, you won’t be laughing when you watch the actual movie, either. Instead of being irreverent, which was undoubtedly the goal, Jennifer on My Mind is distasteful and unfunny. It’s also very boring, which is quite an accomplishment given the lurid storyline. Seeing as how the movie was directed by Noel Black, who made the masterful black comedy Pretty Poison (1968), and seeing as how the film was based on a book by the respectable Roger L. Simon, it’s tempting to point the finger of blame at screenwriter Erich Segal. Yes, that Erich Segal, Mr. Love Story himself. Once again, Segal demonstrates his unique gift for generating slick tedium. In fairness, though, nothing works in Jennifer on My Mind, so the script may simply be the most glaring of myriad unsatisfactory elements.

          The storyline unfolds on two levels. In the present-day narrative, rich twentysomehting Marcus (Michael Brandon) avoids family members and friends who visit his pad because he’s concealing a corpse. In flashbacks, we see Marcus’ courtship with the girl who ended up rotting in his bathtub. She’s Jennifer (Tippy Walker), a dimwitted hippie whom Marcus meets in Europe. Over the course of their hot-and-cold relationship, Jennifer got involved with hard drugs. To say that the narcotics angle feels incompatible with the film’s various gooey, music-driven love montages is an understatement, but as we all know from Love Story, Segal’s got a thing for gooey, music-driven love montages. Leading players Brandon and Walker are forgettable, but several semi-famous players show up in incidental and/or supporting roles, namely Peter Bonerz, Barry Bostwick, Jeff Conaway, Renée Taylor, and Chuck McCann. The picture also features an early performance by a future superstar. Robert De Niro shows up for one scene piloting a gypsy cab—yep, it’s De Niro playing a taxi driver five years before Taxi Driver. The actor brings his usual early-career intensity to a silly bit part as a hack wired on speed, but his brief appearance isn’t sufficient reason to trudge through Jennifer on My Mind. 

Jennifer on My Mind: LAME

The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971)

Here’s some irony for you: This comedy about inept gangsters it itself ineptly made. If the irony doesn’t strike you as funny, that’s appropriate, because The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straightisn’t funny, either. In fact, the most noteworthy thing about this brainless flick is how many talented people worked on the project. Venerable Big Apple columnist/novelist Jimmy Breslin co-wrote the script, which was based on his novel, which was in turn based on the exploits of a real-life crime figure. Ace New York cinematographer Owen Roizman shot the picture, though you wouldn’t know it from the choppy editing that makes Roizman’s frames feel amateurish. And the cast includes a number of reliable professionals—including Jerry Orbach, Lionel Stander, and Burt Young—to say nothing of Robert De Niro, appearing in one of his earliest films. The story revolves around a mid-level gangster (Orbach) enlisting his idiot cronies for attempts on the life of a villainous don (Stander). De Niro’s character, who seems to drift in from another movie, is an Italian bicyclist brought to America by Orbach’s character; the cyclist then gets his own uninteresting subplot. The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight is such a mess that even De Niro comes off badly, mostly because director James Goldstone can’t maintain a consistent tone. The bulk of the picture is played as broadly as slapstick, but certain sequences have a dramatic vibe, notably those involving the love story between De Niro’s character and a mafia princess played by a miscast Leigh Tayl0r-Young. Alas, the comedic sequences are numbingly stupid, and the dramatic sequences are lifeless. From start to finish, The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight is disjointed, episodic, and loud, with long stretches of screen time consumed by stupid contrivances: The mobsters steal a circus lion and use the animal to intimidate robbery victims; a little person (Hervé Villechaize) is the butt of assorted crass jokes; an old Italian mother (Jo Van Fleet) spews lines line, “You no take-a no bull-sheet!”; and so on. It’s all very tiring to watch.

The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight: LAME

The Last Tycoon (1976)

          Despite an impressive literary pedigree, the participation of a legendary director, and the presence of a high-wattage cast, The Last Tycoonis a lead balloon of a movie, so overcome with its own importance that barely any traces of life show through the artificially imposed veneer of highbrow seriousness. Were it not for the inherently lurid storyline, and the ease with which the varied film professionals involved in the piece skewer their own industry, the picture would be a chore to watch. As is, The Last Tycoon is bearable though not particularly enjoyable.
          Based on an unfinished novel by Jazz Age scribe F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose manuscript was completed by editors for posthumous publication, The Last Tycoon is a veiled biography of Hollywood wunderkind Irving Thalberg, the brilliant but physically frail MGM executive of the 1930s. In Fitzgerald’s narrative, Thalberg becomes the fictional Monroe Stahr (played in the movie by Robert De Niro), a ’30s studio executive struggling to keep various projects on track despite egomaniacal stars, labor unrest among screenwriters, and romantic entanglements.
          Director Elia Kazan surrounds De Niro with a constellation of stars, so the cast includes Tony Curtis, Ray Milland, Robert Mitchum, Jeanne Moreau, Jack Nicholson, Donald Pleasance, and Peter Strauss. In fleeting moments, the script (by esteemed British playwright/screenwriter Harold Pinter) gives these actors material worthy of their skills, as in the tense scenes between Stahr and a crass union organizer (Nicholson). Sequences pulling back the curtain of the Golden Age filmmaking process have some zing as well, since it’s fun to watch Stahr screen rushes of in-progress films and bark out instructions for improving lackluster footage.

          Alas, Stahr’s professional life is only partially the focus of the movie, since Kazan devotes inordinate amounts of screen time to stultifying romantic scenes. It doesn’t help that De Niro gives a weirdly lifeless performance. One suspects De Niro wanted to work a different groove after several years of playing volatile characters, but he’s restrained to the point of catatonia throughout much of The Last Tycoon; combined with Kazan’s chaste camera style and Pinter’s characteristically terse dialogue, De Niro’s non-acting becomes deadly dull. Plus, there’s the basic problem of the source material never having been properly completed. Although the movie’s narrative runs a full course, it’s anybody’s guess whether this was the actual story Fitzgerald would have told if he finished his novel.

The Last Tycoon: FUNKY