MORRIS DICKSTEIN
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nizable De Niro, acting out on his own body what the real Jake acted out
in his life. I could hardly think of a better ploy to discredit Method acting
and kitchen-sink realism. It makes La Motta even harder to identifY with;
the fighter's body is gone, so he barely seems to be the same person; his
misery seems entirely his own doing. In
Mean Streets,
his first film for
Scorsese, De Niro played a clown and a screw-up but at least he had a
devil-may-care flamboyance; even in his self-destructiveness he added a
touch of crazy rebellion to the gray Italian neighborhood.
Above all, Scorsese didn't lock us in with this character. Just as he
used Ray Liotta as the young ousider and observer in
GoodFellas,
we
watch De Niro in
Mean Streets
through the eyes of the time-serving
Harvey Keitel, who wants to be a good soldier in the mob, to get ahead,
but also wants to save his troublemaking friend. In
Raging Bull
the weak,
sensible Keitel of
Mean Streets
becomes the loyal, rational brother Joey,
played wonderfully by Joe Pesci, who provides us with a reality check but
no alternative way of seeing him; he loves his brother, but he's as repelled
and puzzled by Jake's behavior as we are.
Though Joey can be as short-tempered and violent as Jake - there's a
great scene in which he beats up some mob friends who are too cozy
with Jake's wife - Joey has the Keitel character's old talent for getting
along. No demons haunt him - he's sane, funny, foul-mouthed, horny,
essentially normal: his brother's obsessions make no sense to him. When
Jake drives Joey away, Jake loses his last link to ordinary behavior and
unconditional love; his life and career go completely off the rails. ''I'm a
bum," Jake tells his wife, trying to make it up with her. One of the film's
best scenes comes when Vickie tries to patch things up between the
brothers. We see Jake with a black eye under his hat, sitting in a darkened
telephone booth, an enigmatic look on his face, trying to utter into the
receiver words that never come. His brother, without knowing who's on
the line, emits a colorful stream of curses that tell us volumes about his
comfortable attitude toward life.
The second half of the movie is full of good scenes that almost make
up for the clumsy realism and willed alienation that preceded them. As he
loses the title, we feel a grudging respect for the man who invites and en–
dures this massive pounding, who stands with his arms helplessly at his
side - ecstatic and unconquerable in his stoicism - with blood on the
ropes, blood covering his face and legs, even splattering across the ringside
seats. His brother Joey is far away, ruefully watching the match on TV.
Jake is the same man who once asked Joey to hit him hard to show how
tough he was, to show he wasn't someone who "takes it up the ass," the
same man who later smashes his fists and head into the walls of the jail
cell, who finally points the finger at himself in the mirror as his own
