Search - Mean Streets on DVD

MPAA Rating: R Content Advisory: Graphic Violence, Not For Children, Adult Language Movie Release: 1973 DVD Release: 08/25/1998 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV,Pan and Scan Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English, French SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 52 mins Studio: Warner Home Video Members Wishing: 9 Genres: Crime, Crime Drama, Gangster Film, Coming-of-Age, Urban Drama See Also: Mean Streets [Widescreen]

"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." Returning to the autobiographical milieu of his 1968 debut Who's That Knocking at My Door? for his third feature, Martin Scorsese examined the daily struggles of a wannabe hood to keep his morals straight on the streets of Little Italy. Driven equally by his wish to become a respectable gangster like his uncle (Cesare Danova) and his desire to live his life like St. Francis, Charlie (Harvey Keitel) takes on his energetically unhinged friend Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) as his own personal penance, intervening to get Johnny Boy to pay off a debt to the local loan shark Michael (Richard Romanus). Despite his promises to his epileptic girlfriend Teresa (Amy Robinson) that they will move out of Little Italy once he strengthens his position in his uncle's world, Charlie's involvement with Johnny Boy further ensnares him in the neighborhood. When Johnny Boy decides to mouth off to Michael rather than pay him, Charlie, Johnny Boy, and Teresa try to flee Michael's murderous anger (and an assassin played by Scorsese), forcing Charlie to realize that the rules of the streets do not mesh with absolution. Whereas fellow "film school generation" director Francis Ford Coppola transformed the Hollywood gangster movie into metaphorical epics about the Mafia and capitalism in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), Scorsese revised the genre in the opposite direction, focusing on the gritty minutiae of daily life and drawing from personal memory. Combining documentary-style realism (even though most of the film was shot in L.A.); kinetic editing and camera movement; and expressionistic lighting, angles, and film speed, Scorsese presents an intimate picture of the trivial incidents and latent violence of Charlie's and Johnny Boy's world, naturalistically unfolding their experiences rather than simply explaining what motivates them. They lead a claustrophobic, petty existence that Scorsese and screenwriter Mardik Martin witnessed growing up in Little Italy, complete with a soundtrack of hit songs like "Be My Baby" and "Jumping Jack Flash" that had poured out of neighborhood radios. Mean Streets opened at the New York Film Festival to excellent notices and played strongly in New York but failed to duplicate that level of business elsewhere. Even so, Mean Streets established Scorsese and De Niro as formidable young talents and marked the beginning of a long-running and fertile collaboration that continued in such films as Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), and Goodfellas (1990). Scorsese's exceptional grasp of the texture of day-to-day life, the rhythm and cadences of street talk, and cinema's visual and aural possibilities makes Mean Streets one of the pivotal films of the 1970s, as well as of Scorsese's career, and an influence on such future filmmakers as Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, among many others. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

Robert De Niro - Johnny Boy
Harvey Keitel - Charlie
David Proval - Tony
Amy Robinson - Teresa
Richard Romanus - Michael

The groundbreaking Mean Streets put Martin Scorsese on the map, but this Warner DVD release shows that the movie is even more influential today than when it first hit theatres in 1973. While this edition of the DVD was one of the earlier releases of the digital format, it basically serves as an acceptable stopgap release until a more definitive edition is put together. Thankfully, Mean Streets had already been remastered for a theatrical re-release in the late '90s and the widescreen transfer looks pretty good, though it wasn't done in the superior anamorphic process, which ensures even better quality on high-definition televisions. The Dolby Digital 1.0 audio transfer comes in the theatrically released Mono format and it sounds decent coming out of either a TV or stereo. This is important, because along with The Graduate and American Graffiti, Mean Streets revolutionized the use of wall-to-wall popular songs in place of a more traditional motion picture score. A future release of this historically important movie is bound to come with a making-of documentary and an audio commentary courtesy of Scorsese, who infused so much of what he saw and experienced growing up into a fictional film populated by petty, but very human, thugs. ~ Nick Dedina, All Movie Guide