Mean Streets
By Kit Macdonald
Rereleased for its 50th anniversary last year, Mean Streets marked the beginning of one of the most fruitful and long-standing collaborations in cinema history: that of Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro. The latter plays Johnny Boy, the reckless, self-destructive friend of Harvey Keitel's shame-wracked Charlie, a small-time hood with aspirations of rising within the Mafia.
Mean Streets was also Scorsese's first film of his own design - he was inspired to make a film reflecting his own experiences of growing up in Little Italy by the searing verdict of John Cassavetes on his previous feature, Boxcar Bertha. Cassavetes told him, in typically uncompromising fashion, that he had "just spent a year of your life making a piece of shit". Everything Scorsese has done since stemmed from Mean Streets, so we probably all owe the straight-talking Cassavetes our thanks for more than just his own excellent body of cinematic work.