>
> Many works of the 70s - Save the Tiger,
> Taxi Driver, the Last Detail, Chilly Scenes of Winter - were desultory in
> reaction to the perceived failures of 'the Sixties.'
Teaching a Scorsese course this semester I placed some emphasis on his
early films as reactions to the sixties, which are suggested by
references to Greenwich Village, just a couple of blocks away from and a
whole world away from the Elizabeth Street Little Sicily neighborhood in
which Who's that Knocking at My Door and Mean Streets are placed. In the
first film, set in 1967, the Village the main character, who is
beginning to break from the neighborhood, wants to go to there but his
friends see that as just sitting around with a bunch of fairies. In the
second film, set in the early 1970s, there is a much greater interaction
between the Village and Elizabeth Street, with two gay guys and blacks
even in the local bar/ neighborhood hangout, though it still functions
for most of the guys to some extent as a place to go pick up broads.
When Johnny Boy comes in with two Jewish girls picked up in the Cafe
Bizarre (a bit odd, as that place -- glimpsed in footage in the Dylan
documentary -- seems more indicative of 1964 than 1974) Tony, the bar
owner just snorts "bohemians." Probably the tension between the
traditional, if waning, life of Elizabeth Street, is shown in the sex
fantasy sequence that Scorsese added to get distribution but which
nevertheless I think really gives depth to the film. Not only is there a
break in style but the music, otherwise the doowop and soul music that
would have been the music of Elizabeth Street, shifts to Jim Morrison
singing "The End." That really brings home the cultural changes that are
occurring a few blocks away which intrigue the character but which he
can't at that point really participate in. When I showed this in an
earlier class on films of the sixties I pointed out that Flaming
Creatures, which I also showed, was shot just a few blocks away from the
setting of the film.
It was especially interesting to look at these issues in relation to the
Dylan documentary, which I didn't like that much on tv but was very
interested in on dvd. Both Dylan and Scorsese came to the Village around
1961 but their responses and reactions seem to have been very different.
Dylan finds himself in making the break; Scorsese seems to wander into
the life of Ethan in The Searchers.
This shifts things a bit away from politics to more general culture issues.
j
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