One of my favorite scenes in cinema history is Stan and his wife slow-dancing to Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth” in Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep. This single moment, devoid of dialogue, strikes me as both disheartening and life-affirming. One isolated, unrequited display of tenderness becomes reason to weather the everyday hardships. The scene itself doesn’t end in the lover’s embrace the viewer desires, yet Dinah reminds us that sincerity in any denomination can be a reason to wake up in the morning. The music in the entire film is beautiful and succinct (enough so to warrant the 30 year hiatus) but that moment and that song substantially heighten the emotional impact of the film.
@ John: I completely agree about Mean Streets. I think that scene is one of the greatest uses of music, but what I find odd out about it that the way the scene plays out. So, when Johnny Boy enters the bar, the visuals slow and only later do we realise that it is playing in the bar. This leads me to feel like the song is both playing in the bar, but representative of Charlie’s feelings toward Johnny Boy (i.e. Charlie knows that Johnny thinks that he is cool as f###).
Personally, my favourite use of source music has to be ‘Danny Boy’ in Miller’s Crossing, especially given the ridiculous and excessive amounts of gun fire.
It’s great to hear that I ain’t the only one who fell in love with that slow-motion sequence!
In a thread on uses of popular music in movies I listed Jumpin’ Jack Flash in Mean Streets as my favourite.
(It is also one of my favourite uses of slow motion)
His use of pop music, both diagetic and non-diagetic, throughout Mean Streets is brilliant.
other fave Scorcese rock moments:
Life Lessons – Like a Rolling Stone (live) – Bob Dylan and The Band
Goodfellas – Atlantis – Donovan
The Departed – Comfortably Numb (live) – Roger Waters featuring Van Morrison and The Band
@ John: Completely. It so rare that slow-motion actually captures that otherworldly effect that it strives for, but it really does it that scene.
@ Elvis: On the whole, I agree about Scorcese and pop music, but for some reason Comfortably Numb in the Departed never sat right with me. I’ll watch it again tonight and I’ll try to express why.
dp
“This is Mean Streets’ greatest moment & it has the best use of source music (in my opinion) because Jumping Jack Flash embodies the personalities of the gangsters, the nature of their appearances & the idea of how the characters want to be envisioned by others. It is socially relevant to the context of the plot & it even works during the scene’s slow motion because the slow motion itself simplifies their appearance; reduces their actions to graceful movement & emphasises their emotions. Slow motion emphasises the elegance behind how the characters move. They see themselves as larger-than-life beings living in grandeur yet the source music embodies their true being. Harvey may view Robert as a gangster relished with charm & grace yet we know it’s not true because the rock n’ roll music personifies reminds us of their true identity; that what we’re seeing is nothing more than a romanticised illusion”
I see why this impresses and how difficult it is to choose just the right song to pull this off but I have serious reservations. I don’t really see complexity in this practice. Scorcese may be more deft at creating this sense f duality between what is expressed by the characters and their “true identity” than say, John Woo is in Face/Off using ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ but I still feel any duality simplifies human interactions and behaviors in unfortunate ways. I don’t think people have a simplistic “true identity” but rather shift back and forth between many different personas depending on their mood and who they are interacting with. I realize in the gangster milieu we tend to think things are simpler but that is a fallacy. Elaine May’s *Mickey and Nicky creates and infinitely more complex world than Scorcese does by never letting music or tendentious shot compositions to dominate the ebb and flow of her characters existence.
I believe a better route than Scorcese’s is either the absence of such musical metaphors or the oblique, non-tendentious use of music seen the David Simon’s The Wire television show.
Just my two cents.
Thanks Mike for your post. It’s fascinating to hear a dissenter’s pov on Mean Streets (or at least on the choice of music for the slow-motion sequence) & while I agree with some of your points, I believe there are qualities in the sequence that should be commented on.
I believe you’re right that the duality of a character’s persons isn’t complex. I believe that once the viewer realises the duality between the character’s appearances & their true identities, there isn’t much else to reflect on. But I believe that duality doesn’t simplify human interactions because the process that leads to a character’s duality is far more complex than it’s appearance.
It’s an obvious fact that if one has a dual personality, their duality will change in the long run. I believe that (as you said) specific persons shift in their personas according to their mood & interactions. However, if one is to be dualistic, they will exhibit several personas over a course of time. The personas themselves are simplistic but the process that leads the person into persona changes is complex. Therefore, I see where you’re coming from but I believe that duality is a complex process that simplifies the appearance/s of their personas in the short run, not the long run.
I don’t believe that gangsters are simplistic. The conception that gangsters are simple-minded is as you say, a legitimate fallacy. & Scorsese proves that it’s a fallacy by using slow-motion to minimalise the appearances of Johnny Boy & Charlie & reduce their actions to simple impulses so that Scorsese can focus on a character’s specific details instead of focusing on the character as a whole.
When a character attempts to understand the specific details that construct another character, they must take a specific point of view. Scorsese’s choice to use slow-motion is nothing short of simplistic (in my opinion) because when we analyse people in real life, we tend to analyse the qualities that summarise themselves as a whole. However, there are people who try to slowen the pace of life & concentrate on a person’s specific characteristics. What is complex is the reason that Charlie envisions Johnny Boy in slow-motion because the sequence itself is ambiguous in nature.
To understand why Scorsese used slow-motion & how this relates to Charlie’s persona is a complex process so my argument is: that Scorsese’s world is indeed complex & that the complexities between the two main protagonists exist in Scorsese’s subtle transitions. But this is not really addressing the subject of this thread anyway…
I believe that Scorsese’s musical metaphor is groundbreaking, meditative & fascinating. I believe it was integral for the slow-motion sequence. & I believe that Scorsese’s world of Little Italy is indeed complex but its complexity isn’t what makes Mean Streets great. It’s Scorsese’s ideas & his application to a lightweight narrative.
“Scorsese’s choice to use slow-motion is nothing short of simplistic (in my opinion) because when we analyse people in real life, we tend to analyse the qualities that summarise themselves as a whole. However, there are people who try to slowen the pace of life & concentrate on a person’s specific characteristics. What is complex is the reason that Charlie envisions Johnny Boy in slow-motion because the sequence itself is ambiguous in nature.”
I see that but what bothers me is that by taking this approach, with the use of the music, i think Scorcese reenforces the idea that what Charlie is seeing is an objective truth about Johnny Boy. He supports the idea that by looking at someone we can figure out who they are both in the film, for the character and in the audience as viewers. This may not seem troublesome in Mean Streets because Johnny Boy is pretty much as simple as Charlie sees him. I think the film, and that scene would be improved greatly if Johnny Boy had displayed so many sides to his persona that when Charlie looked at him he realized he didn’t know anything about him, or at least if this was conveyed to the viewers, despite Charlie thinking his judgement was correct, the film and scene would be far more complex. In essence I think the mistake the film makes is to try to study “insides” instead of impenetrable “outsides.” It’s subtly obsessed with souls when it should be concerned with Faces. :)
Mike, you have intellectual integrity and consistency in your criticisms! Kudos! Seriously.
Thanks Scooter. This forum is, despite a few odd miscommunications, still a great place to debate and clarify arguments that i believe transcend film. I’m glad John and I and others can disagree without any acrimony.
I had another look at The Departed and, man, what was I thinking? I had completely fazed on Comfortably Numb being no more than the make-out scene soundtrack. I recall The Sopranos using the same track to better effect. Actually the use of music is pretty pedestrian throughout The Departed.
Let me change my choice to 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore with Dolly Parton’s I Will Always Love You.
To be honest, Scorsese’s work has been in the doldrums lately. Ever since Casino, the quality of his work has depreciated & so has his choice of source music. I still believe he is the greatest living director to use source music for specific sequences but in The Departed, The Aviator or Bringing out the Dead, the choice of music approaches the tastes of today’s generation instead of exemplifying the thoughts that his sequences are meant to portray. It could be that he’s trying to meet the demands of younger audiences or maybe he just couldn’t top off his use in Goodfellas or Raging Bull. Then again, topping them off through their source music would be a nightmare for Scorsese, let alone another film-maker.
How about recreations of source music? – Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People, and Corbijn’s Control, passim
And wall-to-wall music, as performed right on film: Temple’s The Filth and the Fury
John
Every movie is a time capsule. They transport you into a distinct atmosphere that is representative of the views of those living in that timeframe. Sometimes the movie loses its relevance to the present & ages in its appearance because of the changes we have experienced since then. Examples like The Graduate or To Kill a Mockingbird personify that belief. Yet watching Mean Streets is like watching Dr. Strangelove; it’s a movie whose appearance has aged. Yet its social relevance that imbues its narrative has remained timeless.
Scorsese brought his own flavour in his depiction of Little Italy. His technical mastery in Mean Streets would be improved in his later works. Yet one quality I believe he has not topped since is his use of source music.
I don’t think there’s any movie that embeds source music as well as Mean Streets. It’s not there to show off or be used as a device to attract the attention of younger viewers. It’s there to set the mood, enhance the points of view of its characters. & no other scene in Mean Streets tops the moment where we see the pimpish Robert de Niro walking to Harvey in slow motion with the accompaniment of two ladies.
This is Mean Streets’ greatest moment & it has the best use of source music (in my opinion) because Jumping Jack Flash embodies the personalities of the gangsters, the nature of their appearances & the idea of how the characters want to be envisioned by others. It is socially relevant to the context of the plot & it even works during the scene’s slow motion because the slow motion itself simplifies their appearance; reduces their actions to graceful movement & emphasises their emotions. Slow motion emphasises the elegance behind how the characters move. They see themselves as larger-than-life beings living in grandeur yet the source music embodies their true being. Harvey may view Robert as a gangster relished with charm & grace yet we know it’s not true because the rock n’ roll music personifies reminds us of their true identity; that what we’re seeing is nothing more than a romanticised illusion
If Scorsese masters any quality in a film, it’s his impressive use of source music.
So my question is: what is your favourite scene that uses source music? Which movie is it from & what is the song?