Martin Scorsese
Mean Streets

 It must have seemed very strange to the young Jonathan T. Taplin, who had become wealthy by producing Bob Dylan's concerts, that little man wrapped in a leather coat down to his feet who showed up at his villa with a pool holding two large books under his arm. Seated on the deckchair, Martin Scorsese unfazed by the heat, explained to him the screenplay written with his Iraqi-born friend Mardik Martin. From time to time, he interrupted his impassioned speech to inhale medicine from his asthma device, which had worsened since he had been forced to move from New York to Los Angeles to work in the film industry. He had already made a couple of films including the one for Roger Corman (Boxcar Bertha), which was supposed to be the continuation of "The Barker Clan" but revealed a completely different intention. Now it was the time for a film all his own, not a routine commercial work, but something in which he totally believed.

 It was the portrait of a young generation of Italian-Americans from the Little Italy ghetto caught between the laws of the church on one side  and a life based on crime on the other. Charlie, the main character, mirrored the figure of the director: a young man trying to break free from his Catholic upbringing but at the same time feeling remorse for this temptation, trying to save friends in trouble and especially the reckless Jimmy Boy, who owed two thousand dollars to the loan shark Michael.

  Scorsese himself had abandoned his seminary studies, irresistibly drawn to the "vice" of cinephilia, so much so that he enrolled in the film course at New York University, and now the contact with Taplin allowed him to see his dream realized, just half a million dollars to put on film the two large books of the screenplay he had memorized.

 Thus, at the end of 1972, he gathered the actors he could afford with that tight budget, to make them work as quickly as possible in Los Angeles pretending to be in New York, except for a few days spent in Manhattan for the shooting of the score-settling during the Feast of San Gennaro. His friend Harvey Keitel had acted in the film that was Scorsese's thesis "Who's That Knocking at My Door," and he got the part of Charlie, while for that of Johnny Boy he took this introverted guy , Robert De Niro, who had already worked in Brian De Palma's early underground films, and surprisingly he transformed into a remarkable actor, becoming "explosive" from his very entrance scene when he puts a firecracker in the trash bin blowing it up.

 Keitel and De Niro were both New Yorkers and often in dialogues improvised spontaneously, mumbling in a slang that was completely incomprehensible to the third protagonist, Richard Romanus (the loan shark Michael) who was of Lebanese origin but came from Vermont and hated the script, too rich in religious matters and especially forced by the vulgarities embellished by De Niro. In the scene where Jimmy Boy does not repay the two thousand dollars, the two really got into a fight and had to be separated for real, with Bobby De Niro shouting "You're a fucking asshole! And I'll tell you something Mickey: come on over fag, I've got a big one... Asshole! ... and all this made it into the film, incredible for a 1972 movie!

 The film makes a virtue of economic constraints, the use of the handheld camera that doesn't care about passersby crossing the scene, delving into fights chasing the protagonists with dizzying changes of shooting angles, was borrowed from Martin's admiration for John Cassavetes, and the slow motion itself would become a trademark of Scorsese. The marvelous blend with the music demonstrated the professional experience of the director as a concert film editor. So Johnny Boy struts into Tony's bar (always bathed in red light to symbolize the place of sin) between two girls in slow-motion to the notes of "Jumping Jack Flash," the frenetic brawl in Joey's pool hall lasts exactly as long as the song "Please Mr. Postman" by the Marvelettes, the meetings at godfather-uncle Giovanni's restaurant are always accompanied by "Munasterio 'e Santa Chiara", "Malafemmena" and other Neapolitan classics. Not to mention the tributes made to the place where Scorsese had spent most of his life so far: the cinema. For fun Charlie, Michael, and Tony go to see their idol John Wayne fighting in "The Searchers," but when Charlie and Johnny Boy need to hide, they always take refuge in the darkness of the venue to see a Roger Corman horror film with Vincent Price about to be burned in the flames of hell.