Us and them, me and you.

 Logan Peterson

Joseph Saphire

COM 126.01

12/4/2020

I’d like to try something different with this particular post. I don't want to draw conclusions at first, I just want to talk about the three films and their editing. Mean Streets, Do the Right Thing and Annie Hall have a lot to say and I think the best way to do them justice, is to talk about them all at once. 

Annie Hall is fairly simplistic in it’s editing. It uses shot/reverse shot editing, particularly in the scene towards the end where Alvy asks her to marry him. The film has some creative choices throughout, but the editing felt run of the mill for the most part. Woody Allen certainly can be very creative, he uses a split screen shot when the two titular characters are at their respective therapists to show their differing viewpoints on their relationships. He’s also a master of breaking the fourth wall. At the beginning of the film, Alvy and Annie go to a theater and Alvy complains about the man behind him giving a sophomoric analysis of the movie. He then pulls the man aside, and has him meet the director, who lays into the guy, only to have Alvy say that he wishes real life were like this. It’s a funny scene and establishes that Alvy will be breaking the fourth wall periodically throughout the film. At the end, Woody Allen shows us a montage of Alvy and Annie’s relationship and this one I find particularly interesting. Most of the scenes he shows us are scenes when the characters were bickering, but it still pulls at the heartstrings, because they were so endearing.

Mean Streets didn’t stand out much to me at all. I love the narrative and perhaps I was too focused on the characters to notice anything special that Martin Scorsese did with his editing. However, towards the end the main character, Charlie, is helping his friend escape the city. Charlie, his friend Johnny Boy, and Charlie’s love interest, Teresa are packed into a car, playing music and driving around. The viewer falls into the rhythm of this uncommonly happy moment, hoping that three, despite how the viewer feels about them, escape. Scorsese rips this feeling out from under the viewer as Michael, the man they’re running from shoots at them from another car. The three are badly wounded, it’s not clear if Johnny Boy will die and the movie ends. 

Of the three, Do the Right Thing was the most stylistic. The most obvious example would be Radio Raheem, who was seen through a low-angle any time he popped up on screen. This is to convey his power in the neighborhood, no one messes with Radio Raheem. Director Spike Lee brilliantly shows off tension between the police and the black community by using shot/reverse shots of scowls passed between the two. Lee also uses a long shot during the riot at the end of the film to make it feel much larger than it was. Only one building was looted, but Lee makes it feel like the neighborhood burned to the ground. 

“Scorsese said of a scene like this, filmed in a church, with tracking camera: ‘The whole idea was to make a story of a modern saint in his own society, but his society is gangsters.’” This quote from Mark Cousins’ documentary is Identity in the City. It is what I feel, the three films have in common. Each film has something to say about society, life and systemic problems. 

Do the Right Thing talks about systemic problems and the way we address them. Spike Lee once said that, “the only people that have ever asked me if Mookie did the right thing, are white.” Radio Raheem was murdered by police officers because he attacked a white man. Sal’s life was ended in a not-so-literal way because he started it. Even though Sal had been there for years and had become an institution in the neighborhood, he was hung as quickly as Raheem was lynched, for something that was no fault of his own. The New Yorker review of the film says that without Sal’s use of a racial slur at the end of the film, Lee would’ve been unable to justify the actions of the crowd. Lee didn’t want to justify the reaction of the crowd, he wanted to explain it. The use of the slur was the boiling point, not the fire. Martin Luther King once stated that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” The community in Do the Right Thing rioted because they are unheard. It’s their neighborhood, but there isn’t a single black-owned business. It’s their neighborhood, but the businesses in it, refuse to represent the people they serve. It’s their neighborhood, but they aren’t safe. I don’t think Mookie did the right thing, but his actions are most definitely understandable, though justifiable may be a bridge too far. 

Mean Streets talks about individual issues and how when we don’t have a group to vilify, we turn to each other. Johnny Boy is a despicable character and deserves a reality check, but it’s clear that his relationship with Charlie is a demonstration that he can be a good man. They have fun throughout the film and clearly have a good friendship. The same can be said for Michael and Charlie, who may not be friends, but clearly have a good relationship throughout. This is an Italian community, small-time gangsters and crooks that swindle people outside of their clique in order to get by, but their solidarity slowly breaks down throughout the film. All of the characters throughout have one thing in common: they’re racists. However, the lack of diversity in their community leads to the breakdown of their solidarity. Without a solid comparison on the basis of sex, or race, this community of Italians falls into stereotypes. Johnny Boy: the bum, Charlie: the charismatic problem solver, Michael: the loan shark. There is no identity, no neighborhood to be proud of, no oppression to face, so power dynamics fall to who draws their weapon the fastest and in this case, it’s Michael.

Annie Hall is a breakdown of how the penthouse class turns on each other just as easily, but less violently. Alvy is constantly looking for a group to be hated by, to have someone to fight against. When you’re a famous comedian, that’s hard to come by. He resorts to his girlfriend, Annie. He’s consistently rude to her, they always bicker and eventually break up. He turns their relationship into an “us versus them” situation. He thinks she’s cheating, just because everything is going well. He wants to have sex, she doesn’t. He’s obsessed with death, she isn’t. He obsesses over every argument and every detail until he drives Annie away, until he’s won his battle. Then, when he realizes that there’s no one to fight anymore, he asks her to come back.

Art is a reflection of all that we are. It is our collectivized and deeply personal experience. We are divided, fighting a war on hundreds of fronts. The black community is fighting a system that has been slated against them since it’s inception. The Italians fight the blacks when they have the opportunity, and each other when they have no other choice. People like Alvy, who aren’t on the streets, fight their friends, because they have nothing better to do. These three films are examples of systemic and individual problems. In Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee shows us how fast a community will turn on one of its members when it has nowhere else to direct its outrage. Mean Streets and Annie Hall show us how when we don’t have a group to fight, when we can’t draw a line in the sand, we fight each other. These movies are about the gradual progression of “us versus them”, to “me versus you.”