Mainly through the characters of Charlie and Johnny Boy, but with some important secondary characters as well, this film shows us the streets Martin Scorsese grew up in; the personalities, friendships, and violence oozing from them.
Charlie is a religious man. The first lines in the film, spoken by Scorsese himself, affirm to the character’s belief that purification from sin is not attained in places of worship, but in real life. “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” Throughout the film he expresses these ideas of virtue. We see the film through his perspective. Voiceovers are often used to describe his state of mind at particular moments.
Charlie’s above mentioned philosophy is noted especially in his relationship with Johnny Boy. The latter is an extremely careless person, apathetic to the consequences of his actions. He is very much someone in need to get his life on track, and Charlie is the one trying to help him; more than he tries to help himself.
I really liked the tone of the film. The visual feel of it. The dim lights and colors highlighting the bleakness of the streets our characters breathe in. The red in Tony’s bar especially is a good visual representation of the violence that occurs in there. It is a sort of hell, metaphorically speaking. Charlie has this line while in church, through voiceover, “It’s all bullshit except the pain. The pain of hell. The burn from a lighted match increased a million times. Infinite. Now, you don’t fuck around with the infinite. There’s no way you do that. The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart… your soul, the spiritual side. And you know… the worst of the two is the spiritual.” As he talks about the pain “you can touch with your hand”, he touches the fire from a candle in the church. While he’s talking about “the spiritual” the directors cuts to Tony’s red dimmed bar.
A particular scene I liked a lot in this film is when Charlie is in bed, and his girlfriend, Teresa, walks to the window of the hotel room they’re at. It is very reminiscent of a similar scene in Breathless(1960) except there it’s longer and there’s more dialogue.
The movie’s editing is very influenced by the French New Wave style as well. There are scenes when conversation continues in the same rhythm even though the editing indicates time having passed. This is seen in a scene between Charlie and Teresa in the beach, and another where Charlie and Johnny are roaming the streets during dark hours. Johnny asks Charlie a question at night, a cut later, the sky is bright and Charlie answers Johnny’s question.
Scorsese also pays tribute to films he likes by visually showing his characters watching films in theatres – The Searchers(1956). Charlie also mentions John Wayne when talking with his girlfriend about things he likes.
Donart's Film Blog 