Mean Streets: The Defining Aspects of Martin Scorsese’s Filmography

Martin Scorsese is among the greatest and most popular directors of the modern era. With his twenty-five films and counting, he has managed to remain original every time, while still keeping his signature directorial style and applying it to a modern context.

Films such as Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, The Wolf of Wall Street, Raging Bull and The Departed (which won an Oscar after all) may be considered his best. But to understand the way a director directs and tells a story, I find it a useful exercise to go back to the start. For Martin Scorsese, that would be Mean Streets. This is not the debut film but it is the film that placed him on the map.

Mean Streets was preserved in United States National Film Registry in 1997 for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” as well as being acclaimed by several critics such as Robert Ebert. Released in 1973, the story is that of a Catholic Italian-American man — Charlie, played by Harvey Keitel — who aspires to rise to power in a local mob, while simultaneously feeling burdened by his moral obligation to take care of a psychotic and reckless Johnny Boy — played by Robert De Niro (who has collaborated with Scorsese in nine feature films). Along with this, he is in love with Johnny Boy’s cousin Teresa; she has epilepsy and is disapproved of by…