Mean Streets (1973)
★★★ — Mean Streets (1973)
Mean Streets arrived in 1973 as something close to a declaration of intent. Martin Scorsese, a young director from Little Italy in Manhattan, made a film that felt less like a constructed crime picture and more like a document of a world he actually knew: the cramped bars, the casual violence, the suffocating pull of neighbourhood loyalty, the gap between the religion you were raised on and the life you actually led. Produced through the small independent outfit Taplin-Perry-Scorsese Productions, it was a lean, low-budget affair, shot partly on location in New York and partly in Los Angeles doubling for it, and it carries that scrappy, lived-in quality throughout its 112-minute runtime. The film sits at an interesting moment in American cinema, arriving in the thick of what critics and historians tend to call the New Hollywood era, when a generation of directors were pushing against the polished but unremarkable output of the studio system and finding ways to put personal, uncomfortable material on screen.
Scorsese had made features before this, but Mean Streets is widely regarded as the film where his voice properly crystallised. The restless handheld camerawork, the rock and roll needle drops used almost as emotional shorthand, the interest in guilt as something you carry in your body rather than just your conscience: these are signatures you can trace forward through decades of his work, from Cape Fear to Gangs of New York. It is worth noting that he also turned the camera on his own background in a very different register the following year with Italianamerican, a documentary made in the same period that shares some of the same cultural territory. The script, which Scorsese developed with Mardik Martin, draws on personal observation as much as any literary source, and it shows.
The two central performances are what most people come back to when they talk about this film. Harvey Keitel plays Charlie, a young man trying to balance his ambitions within a small-time criminal milieu against his genuine sense of Catholic obligation, a character who is perpetually caught between wanting to do the right thing and lacking the spine to actually do it. Alongside him, Robert De Niro, in one of his early major roles, plays Johnny Boy, Charlie's volatile, irresponsible friend whose recklessness becomes the engine of the plot. De Niro's energy in the film is genuinely difficult to look away from, all nervous momentum and deflected charm, and you can see here the quality that would carry him through decades of work (including considerably more polished if less raw later appearances, as fans of The Untouchables will recognise). David Proval, Amy Robinson, and Richard Romanus fill out the world around them with the kind of supporting work that makes a neighbourhood feel populated rather than merely set-dressed.
I watched this with toothache. Worst toothache I've ever experienced in my life so I wanted something to take my mind off it. Not sure if that's clouded my judgement somewhat. As far as I recall... this movie boils down to 1 thing. De Niro owes someone money and avoids him about it the entire film until the end. Soundtrack is great. Acting is really good. Just not sure the story really holds up that well.
I'll be honest, watching anything under that kind of physical duress is going to affect how you sit with a film, and I think there's something worth saying about Mean Streets specifically in that regard: it is not a film that makes things easy for you. It asks you to spend time with people making bad decisions for murky reasons, and if you're not fully in the right headspace, the loose, episodic structure can start to feel like it's going nowhere rather than somewhere specific. The performances and the soundtrack are doing a lot of heavy lifting, and when the story itself feels thin, you notice. For me, the craft is undeniable, the atmosphere is there, but atmosphere alone doesn't always get you over the line. Sometimes a film's reputation walks in the room before the film does, and you spend the whole runtime waiting for it to catch up.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1973 | Watched: 2025-05-10
Trailer
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Martin Scorsese: Italianamerican (1974) · The King of Comedy (1982) · Gangs of New York (2002) · Cape Fear (1991)
More with Robert De Niro: The Untouchables (1987) · The King of Comedy (1982) · Shark Tale (2004) · Little Fockers (2010)
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
More crime: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Angst (1983) · Stolen Face (1952) · Cairo Station (1958)
