Mean Streets

If you play with fire, you're going to get burned

Martin Scorcese's Mean Streets is about a young man's struggle between religion and culture. On the one hand, Charlie (Harvey Keitel) is on the rise in the ranks of the Italian mafia: collecting debts and building a reputation so that he may one day start his own business. On the other, he is a religious man trying to atone for his sins. But, as the audience learn from the opening lines of the film,

"You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it." 

The fact that this is a voice over, with Scorcese speaking on Charlie's behalf, is said to imply, "the director's identification with his character, whose religious attitudes and ambivalences he shares." (Gangster Priest, page 182/183)

Throughout the film, Scorcese uses fire to symbolize the inner conflict that Charlie is experiencing. He is often seen putting his finger to matches and flames insisting he is trying to learn a trick. During a bar fight, a table is overturned with a candle on it and when it is righted the candle has gone out. Towards the end of the film, Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) uses a lighter to burn a ten dollar bill, a bill that wasn't good enough for loan shark Michael to accept as payback. Fire is constantly seen in conflict-filled scenes, particularly when Charlie is being forced to choose between morality (helping Johnny Boy) and convenience (going along with the mafia). Overall, this implies his struggle between his religious beliefs and Italian-American cultural expectations. In Italian and Irish Filmmakers, Lordeaux describes it as, "confronting social chaos with religion" (page 221).

Mean Streets is the third in a trilogy of Scorcese films exploring Italian American culture and religion. Although the main characters are different, there are certain continuations that can be noted. For example, the song at the end of Who's That Knocking At My Door? is in the opening credits of Mean Streets (Be My Baby by the Ronettes). In both of these films, the choice of music was very important to the audiences interpretations of the unfolding scenes. Both films have violent and rowdy scenes with the young Italian men fighting and playing with guns. These scenes are accompanied by incongruous music: rock and roll hits or latin beats that would be more appropriate for dancing and having a good time. The choice of music practically ridicules the young men and their violence. Rather than representing powerful masculinity, the characters are reduced to immature adolescents. This represents Scorcese's feelings on Italian American culture.

Another pattern in the trilogy is the female character. Teresa from Mean Streets (like her counterpart in Knocking) is ostracized from the community. In this case, it is her epilespy that separates her, because Charlie's uncle and local mafia boss, Giovanni, sees it as a mental illness and urges Charlie to stay away from her. We feel Charlie will eventually have to choose between loving her or satisfying his uncle. This choice represents what has become Scorcese's classic Italian-American dilemna: individuality and freedom or culture and security. By the end of the film, we get a sense that culture has won. The three rebels (Charlie, Teresa, and Johnny) who are trying to break free from their cultural chains are shot by the loan shark and crash their car. All survive, but as Charlie is escorted to an ambulance, we see a distinct look of defeat.

At the crash site, we notice a pipe has exploded and water is shooting into the sky. Water beats fire.