Sightlines · reception
How Mean Streets was received
1973 · Martin Scorsese · Mean Streets on Sightlines
The arc
Championed from day one — Pauline Kael hailed it as 'a true original' after its 1973 New York Film Festival premiere — but it was only a modest earner; decades on, it's canonized as the big bang of Scorsese's whole universe.
What’s debated
The perennial fan debate: is Mean Streets a raw masterpiece in its own right, or 'a rough draft for Goodfellas' — with Letterboxd forever split over its shaggy, plotless energy.
Its footprint
The opening line — 'You don't make up for your sins in church; you do it in the streets' (voiced by Scorsese himself) — and the 'Be My Baby' needle-drop are endlessly quoted, and De Niro's live-wire Johnny Boy kicked off cinema's most famous director-actor partnership.
Where it stands
A 'you must have seen this' cornerstone — National Film Registry, first chapter of the Scorsese canon, and required viewing for anyone tracing where GoodFellas and indie crime cinema came from.
Did you know? Despite being the definitive Little Italy movie, most of Mean Streets was actually shot in Los Angeles for budget reasons — only about a week of filming happened in New York.
Named by the director
- I Vitelloni (1953) — Scorsese has repeatedly cited Fellini's tale of aimless young men in a provincial town as a direct model for his own neighborhood guys.
- John Cassavetes — Scorsese credits Cassavetes — who bluntly told him to make something personal after Boxcar Bertha — as the push that led to Mean Streets.