Mean Streets
1973 · 112 min
Directed by Martin Scorsese. Written by Mardik Martin, Martin Scorsese. Photographed by Kent L. Wakeford. Starring Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, David Proval, Amy Robinson.
In New York City's Little Italy, a devoutly Catholic mobster must reconcile his desire for power, his feelings for his epileptic girlfriend, and his devotion to his troublesome friend.
Critics 92% · audiences 84% · streaming on Plex, Tubi · $33,000 in the US and Canada · $26,000 elsewhere · about 18,000 tickets sold
What they said about Mean Streets
- 1973
a true original of our period, a triumph of personal filmmaking
— Pauline Kael, The New Yorker - 1973
no matter how bleak the milieu, no matter how heartbreaking the narrative, some films are so thoroughly, beautifully realized they have a kind of tonic effect that has no relation to the subject matter
— Vincent Canby, The New York Times - 1973
In countless ways, right down to the detail of modern TV crime shows, Mean Streets is one of the source points of modern movies.
— Retrospectively, Chicago Sun-Times
How it got made
Apart from his first actual feature, Who's That Knocking at My Door, this was Scorsese's first feature film of his own design. Director John Cassavetes told him after he completed his second film, Boxcar Bertha, a directing project given to him by early independent filmmaker Roger Corman: "You’ve just spent a year of your life making a piece of shit." This inspired Scorsese to make a film about his own experiences, inspired by his upbringing in New York's Little Italy. Cassavetes told Scorsese he should do something like Who's That Knocking at My Door, which Cassavetes had liked.
The screenplay began as a continuation of the characters in Who's That Knocking. Scorsese and Mardik Martin worked on-and-off on the script, whose working title was Season of the Witch, for seven years. Scorsese changed the title from Season of the Witch to Mean Streets, a reference to Raymond Chandler's essay "The Simple Art of Murder", where Chandler writes, "But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid." The title was recommended by Jay Cocks, then a film critic, who later became a screenwriter.
Scorsese sent the script to Corman, who agreed to back the film if all the characters were black. Scorsese was anxious to make the film so he considered this option, but actress Verna Bloom arranged a meeting with potential financial backer Jonathan Taplin, the road manager for The Band. Taplin liked the script and was willing to raise the $300,000 Scorsese wanted if Corman promised, in writing, to distribute the film. The blaxploitation suggestion came to nothing when funding from Warner Bros. Pictures allowed him to make the film with Italian-American characters.