Description
Book SynopsisMean Streets was Martin Scorsese’s third feature film, and the one that confirmed him as a major new talent. On its premiere at the New York Film Festival in 1973, the critic Pauline Kael hailed the film as ‘a true original of our period, a triumph of personal film-making’. The tale of combative friends and small-time crooks is set amid the bars, pool halls, tenements and streets of Manhattan’s Little Italy. Scorsese has said of his childhood neighbourhood, ‘its very texture was interwoven with organised crime’, and this quality would dramatically inform the tone and restless energy of his seminal film. Demetrios Matheou’s insightful study considers
Mean Streets’ production history in the context of the New Hollywood period of American cinema, noting also the key roles played by John Cassavetes and Roger Corman. He analyses the importance of Scorsese’s background to the film’s characters and themes, including preoccupations with guilt, redemption and criminal subcultures; the development of the director’s film-making process and signature style; the way in which he both drew upon and invigorated the crime genre; his relationship with emerging stars Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, and the film’s reception and legacy. Matheou argues that while
Taxi Driver (1976) and
Raging Bull (1980) are regarded as Scorsese’s greatest films of the period,
Mean Streets is the more influential achievement. With it, Scorsese not only paved the way for a new kind of crime movie, not least his own
GoodFellas (1990), but also inspired generations of independently-minded film-makers.
Table of ContentsIntroduction “Twenty dollars! Let's go to the movies!” “I was raised with them, the gangsters and the priests” “Down these mean streets a man must go” Home Movies “You don’t make up for your sins in the church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit” “No. No, Joey Scallops is Joey Clams” “Mook? I'm a mook?” Godfathers and girlfriends Streets, rooftops and cemeteries The man in the back of the car “They’re not even killed. It’s worse” Bobby and Harvey Film release, short and long-term significance Conclusion Credits Bibliography
