9. Mean Streets/Taxi Driver
Mean Streets and Taxi Driver are only separated by a few years in the filmography of Martin Scorsese and deal with similar themes yet they offer very different takes on their themes. One thing that helps bind them together is a shared setting of New York City in the 70s. The two sides of the city that Scorsese focuses on are both fascinating and appalling at the same time. In Mean Streets he shows his characters just trying to get by as small time hoods in New York's sub-section of Little Italy. Little Italy is shown to be a place where criminals are trying to co-exist with honest working men in a very believable and natural way. Taxi Driver offers the exact opposite view of the city. In the film New York is portrayed as a reflection of Travis Bickle's broken and confused psyche. It still has the natural feeling that Scorsese brought to Mean Streets but it also has a surrealistic element that offers entirely new variations on what Scorsese had previously dealt with.