‘Bloody Mama’: Robert De Niro’s very first gangster movie
Strutting into the Hollywood limelight in the 1970s as if he was already a stalwart of the industry, the meteoric rise of Robert De Niro can barely be matched by anyone else in the history of the moving image. Best known for his collaborations with Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola in the early ‘70s, when he made a trio of iconic movies in Mean Streets, The Godfather: Part II and Taxi Driver, De Niro stood face-to-face with the likes of Marlon Brando and showed them the future of cinematic performance.
A method actor so dedicated to his craft that he suffused his entire personality to fit inside the mind of a character, it is indeed difficult to watch something like Taxi Driver and see anything but Travis Bickle, a deeply troubled Vietnam War veteran whose return to New York humdrum wasn’t at all smooth. Likewise, the stress he forces on Scorsese’s Mean Streets is unparalleled in crime cinema, steadily cranking the tension of the movie until breaking point.
But, while audiences only encountered De Niro once he was staring them down, asking, “You Talking To Me?”, the American actor had been plugging away in the industry for over a decade, making his official debut in Brian De Palma’s 1968’s film Greetings, despite a host of previous uncredited roles. Indeed, while many consider Scorsese to be De Niro’s first artistic muse, if it wasn’t for the artistry of De Palma, the actor may have never earned his rightful plaudits.
Working with De Palma on three occasions, Greetings, The Wedding Party and Hi, Mom!, De Palma was taken aback by the actor’s dedication. Recalling the moment he realised how much of a talent he could be, De Palma remembered De Niro approaching him, “I’ve been working on a scene in my scene studies class, could I do it for you?” with the performance being so impressive that the director felt compelled to introduce him to his friend, Martin Scorsese.
But, shortly before this fateful meeting of minds, De Niro briefly collaborated with another icon of cinema, the iconic spiritual godfather of new Hollywood, Roger Corman, who was known throughout the 20th century for pioneering a new kind of low-budget independent cinema. 1970’s Bloody Mama was one of his final directorial efforts, but it would be a seminal film in De Niro’s career, being his first ever gangster movie in a career that would later be celebrated for such genre contributions.
Also starring the likes of Shelley Winters, Bruce Dern and Don Stroud, the lesser-known predecessor to Mean Streets was loosely based on the true story of Ma Barker, an American criminal who organised a criminal ring headed up by her four sons. De Niro played one such son, Lloyd Barker, giving a surprisingly solid performance in a film that doesn’t deserve to get as little recognition as it receives.
A favourite from Corman’s own filmography, Bloody Mama lacked the cheapness of some of his lesser works, with the film being one of his more complex works, speaking to the senselessness of murder at the hands of oddly comedic characters. Solid as Lloyd Barker, De Niro isn’t the focus of the film, but every glimpse we get of his criminal shows cracks of Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle and even Mean Streets’ Johnny Boy.
Too often chucked aside, with his movies being considered Hollywood fodder, Bloody Mama is one of Corman’s greatest works, giving De Niro the very basic foundations that would later prove to be invaluable in the formation of his career. A gritty, dirty and violent feature film, Corman gave De Niro a taste for cinematic criminality.
