Description
Mean Streets was Martin Scorsese's third feature film, and the one that confirmed him as a major new talent. On its premiere at the New York Film Festival in 1973, the critic Pauline Kael hailed the film as 'a true original of our period, a triumph of personal film-making'. The tale of combative friends and small-time crooks is set amid the bars, pool halls, tenements and streets of Manhattan's Little Italy. Scorsese has said of his childhood neighbourhood, 'its very texture was interwoven with organised crime', and this quality would dramatically inform the tone and restless energy of his seminal film.
Demetrios Matheou's insightful study considers Mean Streets' production history in the context of the New Hollywood period of American cinema, noting also the key roles played by John Cassavetes and Roger Corman. He analyses the importance of Scorsese's background to the film's characters and themes, including preoccupations with guilt, redemption and criminal subcultures; the development of the director's film-making process and signature style; the way in which he both drew upon and invigorated the crime genre; his relationship with emerging stars Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel, and the film's reception and legacy. Matheou argues that while Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980) are regarded as Scorsese's greatest films of the period, Mean Streets is the more influential achievement. With it, Scorsese not only paved the way for a new kind of crime movie, not least his own GoodFellas (1990), but also inspired generations of independently-minded film-makers.Author: Demetrios Matheou
Publisher: British Film Institute
Published: 10/05/2023
Pages: 112
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 7.52h x 5.42w x 0.04d
ISBN13: 9781839022951
ISBN10: 1839022957
BISAC Categories:
- Performing Arts | Film | History & Criticism
About the Author
Demetrios Matheou is a journalist, critic, writer and programmer, based in London, UK, who has written extensively on cinema for 25 years. In that time his criticism, interviews and features have appeared in most of the UK's broadsheet newspapers, including The Guardian, The Observer, The Times and Sunday Times and The Independent on Sunday. In the 1990s he was the news editor of Premiere magazine in the UK, and film critic and contributing editor of Marie Claire. He was the film critic for Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper between 2004-18 and since 2010 has been a member of the collective of journalists who produce the award-winning arts website, The Arts Desk.