Mean Streets
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Mean Streets (1973) is an early Martin Scorsese film starring Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro. Charlie (Keitel) is a man who is trying to move up in the crime world and who is hampered by his responsibility towards his childish friend Johnny Boy (De Niro). Charlie works for his uncle collecting debts and is in love with Johnny Boy's cousin, who has epilepsy; his uncle disapproves of his girlfriend explicitly because of her epilepsy. Charlie, who has a strict Catholic upbringing, is probably too forgiving in general to get far in the mafia.
Aside from his student film project Who's That Knocking at My Door? and Boxcar Bertha, a directing project given him by early independent maverick Roger Corman, this was Scorsese's first feature film of his own design. Director John Cassavetes told him after he completed Boxcar Bertha, to make films he wanted to make, about things he knew. Mean Streets was based on events Scorsese saw while growing up in Little Italy. The movie features a memorable 60s soundtrack including two songs by the Rolling Stones but complemented, as in many of his subsequent films, by operatic arias and music from varying genre. De Niro won the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Actor for his role as Johnny Boy Civello. The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
Tagline: You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it on the streets...