Street Scenes

This is an amazing historical document, exploring the explosive response to Nixon's announcement of his incursion into Cambodia. Climaxing in an enormous March On Washington, the film records the confrontation of Wall Street working man with the rebellious students and anti-war personalities like Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Bill Kunstler and so on... This film was made less than a year after the Woodstock festival, and a lot of the film-makers involved with the concert film were on hand for this, much darker, movie. The film ends in a remarkable conversation among some of the participants, in a Washington hotel, after the march has largely failed but before everyone decided to throw over the revolutionary goals. Very clearly these people are talking about "revolution" -- they imagined themselves to be in the midst of one, just as had those dead at Kent State, and as had, perhaps, their killers. This is a forgotten moment in American History, and this film lays it out quite strikingly. Criterion, where are you?

Street Scenes is one of only a very small handful of documentaries of the late 60s/early 70s which accurately capture the tensions, the passions, as the student antiwar movement of the era begins to fragment and cleave itself into two distinct camps: those who believed the movement must continue to be grounded in nonviolent protest tactics, and those who were starting to believe that the violence of the dominant culture when suppressing dissent must be met by the movement itself with a similar response. The film is both time capsule and anthropological document. It is an important record of an integral aspect of an era, and also a record of the intellectual arguments on both sides of the emerging movement divide then occurring. It is also, just solely at the level of its achievements as a film, an important transition point in documentary style between the documentaries of the early to mid-60s, and the later, more narrative-driven documentaries that emerged in the 70s.

I learned of this elusive Martin Scorsese-directed documentary when I was very young (approximately 12 years old), and I became obsessed with finding it, as I was already a fan of his films. I was also an aficionado of war-based documentaries (HEARTS AND MINDS, WINTER SOLDIER and THE ANDERSON PLATOON were among my favorites). Therefore, I had high hopes for STREET SCENES - not only that I would find it, but that it would be extraordinary.

Finally, after decades of hunting, I managed to see it. It did not disappoint. In fact, I was quite surprised by how much of Scorsese's signature touches were prevalent throughout. The filmmaking is raw (1.33:1, mostly black-and-white 16MM with some color sequences, handheld camerawork with little attention paid to elegant framing), but it excels as a vessel for information - in this case, mostly about a protest march on Wall Street, including interviews with the anti-war protestors (most of them college age) as well as the buttoned-down spectators who came to shake their heads at those doing the marching, and later a similar march in Washington, D.C.

The filmmaking is energetic and even somewhat stylized, complete with frequent bursts of classic rock in the soundtrack (Blind Faith's "Had To Cry Today" is the first song heard, over shots of riot squad members standing by with their helmets on and their clubs menacingly in hand). It all has an immersive element, owing not only to the compelling techniques on parade, but to the looming skyscrapers that surround the event being documented, creating an urban backdrop that makes for a very unique-looking environment.

Unfortunately, when the march is over and the movie retires to a hotel room where Scorsese, Harvey Keitel, Verna Bloom and other artistically-minded anti-war activists sit around pontificating about the worth of their media-based contributions to the protest movement, the film downshifts considerably and things become less compelling. However, it's still amusing - and, at times, fascinating - to hear some of the exchanges being recorded.

In all, this documentary - which was heavily influenced by the aesthetic of documentary filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker, Frederick Wiseman and The Maysles Brothers - is fascinating not only for rabid fans of the director's later work, but as a vivid document of a nightmarish time in which the war (and the draft) seemed to never end, and the act of public protesting was nearly as potentially dangerous as military combat itself. I feel it's a strong work and ought to be released.

As of this writing, The Criterion Collection has just announced the Blu-Ray release of Scorsese's early short films, and I'm certain that the people at Criterion tried in vain to get Scorsese to release this documentary as well. At this stage, it appears highly unlikely that the movie will ever enjoy a legitimate release on home video in any format, and that's a real shame. If people were able to see it, they might finally realize that TAXI DRIVER and THE IRISHMAN are - above all else - anti-war statements, both featuring heartless protagonists whose deep-rooted emotional scarring (and capacity for violence without subsequent remorse) stems largely - if not entirely - from their service in the American military.