Differing Views on New York

In all honesty, I see more similarities between Do the Right Thing and Mean Streets, in terms of style, than Manhattan. Scorsese’s and Lee’s films both deal with lower class individuals, and the debacles that they face in everyday life; opposed to Allen’s self-contained upper class New York. Stylistically, both films share many similarities. Like Do the Right Thing, Mean Streets employs a heightened color scheme all throughout the film, to give the environment that Charlie (Harvey Keitel) and Johnny Boy (Robert DeNiro) live in some kind of tension. The tension that the Italian characters in Mean Streets face have to do with their illicit dealings with the law, and the violence that erupts from simple lower class malaise. Violence of a similar kind also erupts in Mookie’s (Spike Lee) environment in Do the Right Thing, but that violence more has to do with racial tension between the Italians in the neighborhood and the black people in the neighborhood.
There are many similarities between Sal’s pizzeria in Do the Right Thing, and the bar that Charlie hangs out in in Mean Streets. Both areas are where heated violence erupts; and both are filmed in similar heightened fashions. (Both films employ slow motion effects in these key areas.) Also, both spaces have pop music constantly blaring throughout them, giving an impression that these areas are frequented by young people. Yet, there is a difference between the two areas (and between the two films) and that is that the point of view of both movies is told from the perspective of two different ethnicities. In Pauline Kael’s review of Mean Streets, the reader gets a sense that the writer could be talking just as well about Do the Right Thing, except that the pov in both movies is radically different.
In the review, she writes that, “These Mafiosi loafers hang around differently from loafing blacks…these hoods live in such an insulated world that anyone outside of it—the stray Jew or black they encounter—is as foreign and funny to them as a little man from Mars” (Kael, pgs. 169-170). The Italian characters at Sal’s pizzeria are just like the characters in Mean Streets, except the film is not told from their perspective.
Allen’s New York is completely different from both Scorsese’s and Lee’s. His New York doesn’t contain an iota of racial tension, probably because his environment (areas like Manhattan) are more upper class than the areas depicted in Lee’s and Scorsese’s films. Manhattan is stylistically the complete polar opposite of Mean Streets and Do the Right Thing. The film is elegantly shot in black and white by Gordon Willis. The film frames that Allen uses are uncluttered, whereas the frames that Lee and Scorsese utilize are full of mise en scene and bustling activity. Allen’s New York is a non-cluttered one, where there are no epitaphs being uttered and no real racial diversity. Everyone’s white, rich, and eating at sardi’s. The only conflict is the one of couple’s cheating on couple’s, but there’s no real guilt felt by the protagonists (opposed to the huge amount of Catholic guilt felt by Charlie and racial guilt felt by Mookie.) Allen’s New York is like the New Yorker publication, whereas Scorsese’s and Lee’s New York represents everything left out of Allen’s representation. Upper class guilt is so much less stressful on the protagonists than lower and middle class guilt, which has the possibility of turning violent. The worlds in Mean Streets and Do the Right Thing, are much grittier that Allen’s world; in Manhattan the banter is witty and erudite compared to the gruff repartee that occurs in a film like Do the Right Thing. Yet, there’s more sociological information present between Mookie and the Italians that he works for at Sal’s than all of the dialogue in Manhattan.
Allen’s comments upon releasing the film were very revealing, in terms of the tone of the film and how it differs from Scorsese’s and Lee’s takes on New York. “According to Allen, the idea for Manhattan originated from his love of George Gershwin’s music. He was listening to one of the composer’s albums of overtures and thought, ‘this would be a beautiful thing to make…a movie in black and white…a romantic movie’…Allen decided to shoot his film in black and white ‘because that’s how I remember it from when I was small…that’s how I remember New York. I always heard Gershwin music with it, too. In Manhattan I really think that we…succeeded in showing the city. When you see it there on the big screen it’s really decadent” (Wikipedia article on the movie). The New York that Allen is depicting is merely the upper class view of the city, freed from any tension or even realistic conflict.

Works Cited:
1. Wikipedia article on Manhattan 2. Kael, Pauline. Reeling. Atlantic Monthly Press Book; Boston—Toronto, 1976.