Mean Streets (1973) on Netflix
Charlie Cappa collects debts for his uncle Giovanni in Little Italy and shields his friend Johnny Boy, who owes a loan shark. He hides an affair with Johnny's cousin Teresa.
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- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
Charlie Cappa is a young Italian American in Little Italy who works as a collector for his uncle Giovanni, a mafioso, and tries to square that work with his Catholic faith. His friend Johnny Boy Civello gambles, refuses to work, and owes money to several loan sharks, among them Michael, a loan shark and friend of Charlie's who keeps coming around for payment. Charlie tries to keep Johnny Boy and Michael apart. In secret he is seeing Teresa, Johnny Boy's cousin, who has epilepsy; Giovanni has told Charlie to stay away from her, just as he wants Charlie to distance himself from Johnny Boy. Charlie tries to reconcile these parts of his life.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Mean Streets (1973)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Roger Corman agreed to back Mean Streets only if all the characters were black, and Scorsese considered it before actress Verna Bloom arranged a meeting with Jonathan Taplin, The Band's road manager, who was willing to raise the $300,000 Scorsese wanted if Corman promised in writing to distribute the film.
- John Cassavetes told Martin Scorsese that Boxcar Bertha, the film Roger Corman had given him to direct, was a piece of shit he had spent a year of his life making, which pushed Scorsese to make a film about his own experiences and his upbringing in New York's Little Italy.
- The film's financiers wanted Jon Voight for the role of Charlie, but he turned them down, and although Robert De Niro requested the part, Scorsese cast Harvey Keitel, having written the character with Keitel in mind; De Niro and Keitel considered switching roles but Scorsese vetoed it.
- Because of the low budget, most of Mean Streets' interiors were shot in Los Angeles with only seven days of location work in New York City, and many scenes were shot without permits, with Scorsese calling favors from old friends and neighbors including Francis Ford Coppola.
- Scorsese used vintage pop songs rather than a traditional score for the soundtrack of Mean Streets, a revolutionary move at the time.
- Martin Scorsese provides the voiceover narration heard throughout Mean Streets even though he never appears as a character in the film, a technique he borrowed from Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni (1953).
- The scene in which Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro fight with trash cans and the scene of the two talking behind the bar were completely improvised by the actors.
