Mean Streets

A dazzling opening: a 16mm snapshot of Charlie Cappa’s street-corner world, set to the rhythm of The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby”. Harvey Keitel is extraordinary as Charlie: the roguish smile, the handshakes, the small-time deals, the private rituals. We are plunged straight into the September celebrations of the Feast of San Gennaro. In the shadow of the festivities, gangster life carries on. Charlie, Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) and the rest of the crew spend their nights in Tony’s bar – moving from St Patrick’s Cathedral to a den of sex, drugs and violence. The sacred meets the profane. Scorsese would go on to build much of his cinema on this very tension. Here, for the first time, he gives full expression to his fascination with evil and his urge to search within it for traces of redemption. Mean Streets was inspired by his own childhood in New York’s Little Italy. The film emerged out of a turbulent production history. John Cassavetes pushed Scorsese to dig deeper after dismissing Boxcar Bertha (1972) as mere hackwork. At one stage, producer Roger Corman wanted the project reshaped as a blaxploitation film with an all-Black cast; later, once financing came from Jonathan Taplin, manager of The Band, Jon Voight was promoted for the lead role. Hovering over the entire production were the spirits of Godard’s Breathless and Fellini’s I Vitelloni, and in the finale the cinephile director slips in an echo of yet another classic: Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat.

Maciej Kowalczyk

Martin Scorsese (b. 1942) – American director, screenwriter and producer. Considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, a master of storytelling and visual artistry. His films, such as Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), andGoodFellas(1990), redefined gangster and psychological cinema. He won an Oscar for The Departed (2007) and later impressed with the epic The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). Blending grand spectacles with intimate storytelling, he explores themes of guilt, redemption, and violence. His work is driven by passion, precision, and a deep understanding of human nature.