Filming the Mean Streets

First of all, I want to say I didn’t like this movie. It just didn’t impress me.

One of the most noticeable differences between Kubrick’s and Scorsese’s style of work is the use of acting.

In “Mean Streets,” the actors perform their work more freely than they do in Kubrick’s movies. Scorsese seems to leave room for improvisation in his movies. On the other hand, Kubrick doesn’t let escape any detail in his works. He has everything meticulously planned; and he makes the actors act the way he want them to do, so his plans can’t “fail.”

Scorsese uses acting in a more realistic way than Kubrick does. This is another way in which the use of acting of both directors differs. In “Mean Streets,” the fight scenes are examples that prove this criterion. In these scenes, the actors perform a bunch of drunken people fighting; and they look exactly like that, drunken people having a fight between drunken people. They just throw punches randomly and walk like drunken people do. These fights aren’t presented in the same way as they are presented traditionally in movies. In Kubrick’s movies, acting is perfectly executed, it is an art. We can’t expect anything different from Kubrick. He is a perfectionist; everything has to be perfect and everything is.

Another noticeable fact that differ the style of work in Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” and in Kubrick’s movies is the type of message they present. Through his movies, Kubrick expresses his ideas and opinions about the world’s most controversial themes, at their time of release. In “Mean Streets,” Scorsese exposes what he saw everyday in the streets of Little Italy, where he lived when he was a boy.