In his article entitled “Ideas of Authorship” Edward Buscombe discusses the development of the auteur theory of cinema as it was started by the French film critics of the 1940’s. The article states that “the project of a new film magazine would be to raise the cultural status of the cinema. The way to do this, it seemed, would be to advance the claim of the cinema to be an art form like painting or poetry, allowing the individual freedom of personal expression (23)”. In the same article Buscombe quotes Francois Truffaut, one of the founders of the auteur theory in saying that “a true film auteur is one that brings something genuinely personal to his subject (23)”.
Martin Scorsese is a director who has been considered an auteur of cinema for most of his career. His personal and artistic touches to films are clearly defined. His films Mean Streets which he made early in his career and Goodfellas which was made long after he had established himself as a director both deal with the world of the New York City mafia. The former film is a semi-autographical piece about a character that is torn between his lifestyle and his Catholic guilt, while the latter is a piece about the consequences that the temptations of a life of crime can lead to. Each film uniquely represents various stages of Martin Scorsese’s life.
In his article “The Auteur Cinema the film generation in 1970’s Hollywood” David A. Cook states that “Scorsese grew up in New York’s Little Italy and became deeply infatuated with the movies. After graduating from high school, he entered seminary school with the intention of becoming a priest (24).” Scorsese’s conflict between his Catholicism and his love for cinema was particularly evident in his early films. In the Journal of Popular Film and Television Richard A. Blake writes:
The Catholic imagination of Martin Scorsese, it can be argued, penetrates to the core of his thought and sensibility, shaping the way he perceives the world and the way he recreates that world in his films. Scorsese himself has acknowledged the extent of the influence of his Catholicism: “It always will [be] in every piece, in every work I do, even in the way I act.”(6)
Mean Streets has more evidence of Catholic guilt than any other of Scorsese’s work. The main character played by Harvey Keitel is a low rent gangster, a street thug who specializes in petty theft and gambling. The film offers a look at the underbelly of Little Italy. It goes into the strip clubs, the alleys, the bars, and the scummy apartments that only people growing up in Little Italy might have seen. The most dramatic and memorable image in the film is of Scorsese kneeling in front of an alter in a church and holds his hand as close to a flame as he can.
He prays at the alter, and goes through the usual motions of crossing himself, but he does it with an expression of guilt and anguish on his face. He knows his life as a criminal as a sinful one. He knows that praying in church and asking for forgiveness is a way of redeeming your sins but he doesn’t seem sure that the redemption is actually going to occur. Keitel’s character Charlie is the embodiment of Martin Scorsese at the time the film was made, and in fact the voiceover narration in the film often alters back and forth between the voice of Harvey Keitel and the voice of Scorsese himself. This is the director trying to stamp a work of art with his own personal touch.
Film critic Roger Ebert writes that “The film recalls days when there was a greater emphasis on sin – and rigid ground rules, inspiring dread of eternal suffering if a sinner died without absolution. Charlie walks through the movie seeking forgiveness – from his Uncle Giovanni (Cesare Danova), who is the local Mafia boss, and from Teresa, his best friend Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), the local loan shark Michael (Richard Romulus) and even from God. He wants redemption.” Scorsese abandoned his quest to become a priest after one year in order to attend film school.
He was torn between the obsessive desire to make films and need to serve his god. Perhaps he went in the direction of filmmaking because he felt it was his greatest skill. Charlie in Mean Streets has no talent other than being a runner for low rent, petty criminals. He surrounds himself with criminals, people who sell drugs and sex and people who kill one another. He doesn’t often participate in these activities, he serves as more of a middle man but instead of extricating himself from that lifestyle he tries to act as a mediator because he desires forgiveness from everyone around him.
The opening line of the Mean Streets is “You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. The rest is bullshit and you know it.” This is voiceover narration from Charlie. This dialogue would seem to indicate that Charlie is destined to make some kind of personal sacrifice of himself or someone around him that will occur in the streets rather than the church. The main person he tries to redeem in the film is his friend Johnny Boy (played by Robert Deniro) who is also a runner for the mafia but he’s mentally unstable, can’t be depended on, is constantly borrowing money he can’t return and generally making a nuisance of himself. Charlie is a much more grounded gangster. He views his career as a way to make a living for himself, whereas Johnny Boy represents a gangster with his entire lifestyle. Charlie knows that Johnny Boy’s recklessness is going to lead to his demise and that he needs to get Johnny away from the lifestyle before it ends badly for both of them.
At the end of the film, when both men are gunned down after a chase throughout Little Italy, they have made the ultimate sacrifice to the streets. While Charlie has failed to redeem himself as a Catholic before being murdered, and he has failed to redeem Johnny Boy as well he still experiences a form of redemption by losing his blood to the streets. Blake writes “At the same time, by the shedding of their blood both men achieve a form of salvation. It is the kind of redemption one associates not with the church, but with the streets (26)”. The quote from the beginning of the film remains true to the end. The point seems to be that a life in the church and a life in the streets cannot coexist. While this is bleak for the characters in the film, it’s useful to the filmmaker who knows that filmmaking and religion are capable of coexisting.
Blake writes:
The varied conflicts between wanting to belong to a community and fearing the loss of personal integrity may echo many of Scorsese’s own mixed feelings in being technically “excommunicated” from the Catholic Church because of his divorces and failure “to make [his] Easter duty.”(31) He continues to speak respectfully of the Church and still considers himself a member, even though he is apparently not inclined to accept personally many of its teachings and practices. Goodfellas was made twenty years after Mean Streets and it still features gangsters in Little Italy but it’s a different breed of gangster. The gangsters in Goodfellas aren’t low-rent thugs, they’re wealthy men who run the area they work in, throw money around as if it grows on trees, bossily control everyone around them and relish in their lifestyle. Nobody experiences the angst of Catholic guilt or the desire for the redemption that the characters in Mean Streets do.
The first thing the main character Henry Hill says in the movie is “As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster.” One of his last lines of dialogue, after he is put away in the witness protection program and separated from the mafia lifestyle he says that he misses the life and that he “can’t even get a decent mean anymore.” Henry Hill was a greedy man, obsessed with an unhealthy lifestyle that eventually left him hanging out to dry but rather than obsessing about forgiveness for his crimes he looks on them with glee and fond memories. He wouldn’t take any of it back if you paid him.
But Goodfellas isn’t without guilt. As Scorsese stated, Catholicism is evident in all of his work. While the men in Goodfellas don’t discuss religion and there is no religious symbolism in the film, there is the uneasy feeling that these men are getting pleasure out of inhumane, criminal activities and we as an audience are getting a thrill from watching them. While Henry Hill doesn’t beg for forgiveness, the audience sees his drug addiction, womanizing, murdering and stealing, sees that he doesn’t seek forgiveness for it and feels guilt for spending an entire film empathizing with a man who was essentially evil throughout. While there are several exhilarating scenes in Goodfellas Scorsese ultimately makes the audience regret enjoying those scenes. The movie is a condemnation of organized crime and the constant images of men who commit crime and don’t try to redeem themselves is where the Catholic influence of Scorsese is stamped onto the picture.
Stylistically there are many similarities between Mean Streets and Goodfellas. Two scenes in each respective film in particular strongly echo one another, both of them involving the main character and the way he moves through a certain space. Ebert writes about Mean Streets “He enters the bar in a series of shots at varying levels of slow-motion (a Scorsese trademark). He walks past his friends, exchanging ritual greetings, and eventually he gets up on the stage with the black stripper, and dances with her for a few bars of rock ‘n’ roll.” This is a key scene in the context of the film.
It introduces one of the main hangouts for the criminals it shows that Charlie is a well known man in this location and that it’s important for him to introduce himself to everyone. The slow motion effects give the scene an uneasy quality. While Charlie is clearly an important person in this location everybody around him looks mean, unhappy and shady. There is no glamour to this bar and the stripper onstage is an even further indication of that. There is a similar scene in Goodfellas in which Henry Hill walks through a night club with his girlfriend.
Ebert writes:
“In the most famous shot in the movie, he takes his future wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco) to the Copacabana nightclub. There’s a line in front, but he escorts her across the street, down stairs and service corridors, through the kitchen area, and out into the showroom just as their table is being placed right in front of the stage. This unbroken shot, which lasts 184 seconds, is not simply a cameraman’s stunt, but an inspired way to show how the whole world seems to unfold effortlessly before young Henry Hill.
There is a stark contrast between the nightclub in Henry Hill’s world and the strip bar in Charlie’s world. As Henry moves effortlessly through the areas of the club that few people have access to he is treated with respect. He’s given the best seat in the house, the people are enthusiastic to greet him and the surroundings are attractive. This is the world that Henry has been tempted by and he relishes every second of it. The unbroken camera shot is used by Scorsese to show the easiness in which Henry moves through his universe. It’s completely different from the slow-motion of Mean Streets. There’s no slow emphasis on every action Henry Hill makes. His world is fast, efficient and doesn’t stop.
The two different scenes could be indicative of how Scorsese’s life was at the time that each film was made. When he made Mean Streets he was a young, up-and-coming, unsuccessful filmmaker and the process of making a good movie was likely a very slow one. He was also riddled by Catholic guilt and obsessed with making a film about that guilt. When he made Goodfellas he was a successful filmmaker who could make any film he wanted quickly and efficiently. Life was much easier for him and as he matured as a director his films began to lean more towards great stylistic content than deep meditations on Catholicism.
There are distinct uses of cinematography in each film that gives them similarities. The use of the color red comes into play very distinctly. The entire strip club/criminal hangout that the characters occupy in Mean Streets is bathed in a shade of red. Ebert writes “the club is always bathed in red, the color of sex, blood and guilt.” Indeed, this club that Charlie frequents is often the source for his most sinful activities. He’s seen getting drunk, getting into fights, witnessing drug use and expressing sexual desires towards women in the club. Red is the color of sin and passion and the passion of Charlie’s criminal lifestyle is represented by the red of the camera work. The outside world seems more cold and dark by comparison.
The most distinct use of the color red in Goodfellas occurs during a scene about halfway through the film in which Henry and his cohorts are digging up the body of a man they had killed. The scene shows them in the middle of a field, their outlines barely visible because of the red of the headlights which bathe the screen in a shade of crimson. The scene is notable because as they dig up the body, Henry gets ill and vomits at the site of the dead body. It’s the first time we notice Henry being genuinely uneasy about his work. The dead body in the trunk is a source of discomfort for Henry in general. As they dig it up he loses everything in his stomach while the screen is a fiery red. The red is the blood and the sin that Henry Hill couldn’t handle. It pushed him over the edge and made him ill.
Martin Scorsese remains an American auteur, a director who has created and developed his own personal artistic style which he puts into every film. Pauline Kael writes “The ultimate premise of the auteur theory is concerned with interior meaning, the ultimate glory of the cinema as an art. Interior meaning is extrapolated between a director’s personality and his material (541)”. The progression between Mean Streets and Goodfellas shows two films with similar subjects in which the director has used his personality to give deeper meaning to the stories. The young, guilt-riddled Catholic filmmaker has since turned into the older, less Catholic but still respectful of it adult and while there was a different director behind each movie watching them closely you can see the same personality driving the art form.
