Mean Streets

Set during the Feast of San Gennaro in the Italian neighborhood where Martin Scorsese grew up, and populated with characters and situations based on the neighborhood’s inhabitants, Mean Streets is an early distillation of the themes that would define the director’s career. Charlie (Harvey Keitel) is torn between his devout Catholicism, his commitment to his volatile friend Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro), a romantic entanglement with Johnny’s cousin Teresa, and opportunities offered by his crime boss uncle. Crackling with creative energy, this now iconic neo-noir is inflected with influences from French New Wave, cinema verité, and American independent filmmakers like Kenneth Anger, John Cassavetes, and Shirley Clarke.