This is a digression.
What I saw in the movie were the little gangsters who were in Little Italy going to the bar every day, fighting, avoiding debts, and picking up girls.
Young De Niro's handsome bastard and charming evil.
There is also Harvey Keitel in this film who has much more time than De Niro's shots. Charlie of Havey Keitel is contradictory. Sicoses designed his characters to be devout Christians, so clever. Charlie's contradictions are as attractive as his intelligence, sensitivity and introversion.
The film takes a lot of shots to portray life in Little Italy: music, red, assemblies, rituals.
The young Harvey Keitel is under the red light of the bar. The lens focuses on his handsome face from far and near. The music is Jumpin Jack Flash of The Rolling Stones. This clip is a classic in film history. But why? Perhaps because before Mean Streets, no director used such a heavy-handed approach to portray the life of young gangsters in New York. Their hesitation, wasted time, and nonsense, even cute and memorable, those who are gone forever, the chaotic but shining youth.
This film was collected by the Library of Congress for "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" (with significant cultural, historical, or aesthetic value).
Another movie I remember that was collected by the Library of Congress with the same evaluation is Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show.
Martin Sicoses’ Italian family group reminds me of James Grey’s Jewish family group. They have the same life style and passionate characters. The latter is also my favorite director. However, many people have low evaluations of James Grey’s movies. I Can't think of why.
Wes Anderson copied a lot of things from this film. The early Bottle Rocket borrowed from Mean Streets from the tone to the music. When Noah Baumbach mentioned this in an interview with NYPL, Wes was still a bit noncommittal.
It's no wonder that Xikosese praised Bottle Rocket, and probably saw his young self in it.
In the tidbits, I saw the young Sikoses, who turned out to be this handsome when he was young!
However, it looks a lot like Richard Hammond, the host of Top Gear.
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