Mean Streets

Just finished watching Mean Streets.

For half of it, I've thought: What an overrated first piece of prickish work. I've seen this sort of cheap naive flamboyant thuggish sort of movie before, with so many other second-hand directors trying to be original, whatever the price.

Then the movie got into its second half, and slowly found its right tone. Grimmer, darker, truer - if not truer to nature and reality, at least "truer" to the poncifs of the genre. The party and its aftermath: that's the true core of the movie.

It started average, it had some flat parts in the middle ("bellies", as we call them), then finished in style. The end reminds us of things to come: the end of Taxi Driver, several years later.

Not bad. Not bad at all. No great chef d'oeuvre, but a good start for what proved to be one of the highlights of the 20th century cinema: Martin Scorsese.

And those bloody guys: they were so young...