Exclusive Spaces in the Films of the 1970s

The pool halls, bars, burlesque clubs and diners of The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Mean Streets are the places in which characters meet, connect, plot and celebrate. These spaces are also almost always exclusively male. Women do make rare appearances here, but they are always on the periphery, as accessories to men, be it as dates or dancers. Mean Streets and The Friends of Eddie Coyle are stories of organized crime and organized crime is primarily a male domain. As such, these settings almost reek of testosterone. The dark bars are dim and red lit, decorated with mahogany leather furniture and dark wood and there are nude photos plastered on the walls or nude women on stage. When girlfriends or wives do accompany men in these spaces, they keep quiet, they observe, they are offered drinks and they accept them. At some point, they might nag about love and what it means.

These films are of a specific time period, in which a specific belief about male and female space and the difference between the two was dominant. So, the men in these films brawl and break bottles, the women cry and bitch and there is a sizzling energy surrounding it all. Sexual tension is heightened even in sequences in which women aren’t present. There is something compelling in all this unchecked masculinity. It propels the narrative, it reveals the characters and these scenes of fights and flirtations often foreshadow later and more serious violence. This sort of filmmaking simply isn’t done anymore. While the movie industry is still very much an exclusively male space, women’s roles in films have changed a lot over the years. Female action stars brawl hard like men and most movies don’t deal in atmosphere soaked sets anymore. There isn’t the time and most people don’t have the attention spans to notice anyway. 

There is a strange comfort then, in the 70s movie. Some of the tension that exists in these films originates from, I think, the spoken and also unspoken tension between the sexes. In Mean Streets, Harvey Keitel’s Charlie fights with his girlfriend constantly and in The Friends of Eddie Coyle; Robert Mitchum’s Eddie demands his wife leave the room so he can have a phone conversation with his associates about his criminal activities. In these scenes, both women are not allowed to encroach on male turf. This behavior isn’t acceptable, of course. Yet the idea of a certain kind of distance being maintained between the sexes isn’t necessarily a bad thing, rather it is mysterious and interesting. In these films, the camera showcases these spaces, it pans to the back room of the corner store where the lone proprietor stands, or in the old restaurant with the heavy tablecloth and wine glasses where bosses discuss business, or inside the neon-lit dark bar where men lean over pool tables while others watch. This world feels real somehow, familiar, lived in and alive in a way that all the hi-def, CGI enhanced settings of modern films can never be. I can’t say that I’m particularly impressed with modern filmmaking, or the modern era, or feminism, for that matter. I value the plethora of options women have at present, but I don’t particularly value the rather flimsy milieu in which we live now. Male and female space no longer exists and while this should be cause for celebration, somehow everything seems hollow. That hollowness, it seems, is evident in many 21st century films.