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Mean Streets came long before Martin Scorsese began diving into grand tales of power and corruption. You see, before the obsession with men in suits drowning in money or blood, there was this small, jittery film about small-time hoods stuck in a loop, scraping through life in the narrow alleys of Little Italy. It did not care about the big bosses or polished operations but lingered around those at the bottom who were confused, loyal, and reckless.
Scorsese was well aware of this world, not from a distance but from within, and that intimacy shaped every frame in the best possible way.
Distributors Feared Mean Streets’ Brutal Honesty
Mean Streets, if compared to the slickness of Goodfellas, stumbles and burns in its own raw energy. There is no rise to the top when it comes to the characters in the movie or any sort of spotlight glory, it just focuses on a bunch of lost men orbiting around guilt, pride and the church.
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When the film was ready to be shown, not everyone was excited and the reason was that some saw too much truth in it. As a result, the directors flinched and they did not even want to touch it because there was something in the film that made people nervous. Like most of Scorsese’s movies, Mean Streets did not play safe and instead presented a raw, clean story that stayed too close to the bone.
‘Mean Streets’ (1973)
dir. Martin Scorsese
dp. Kent L. Wakeford pic.twitter.com/7aAvVR0J9q— Lenscap (@Lenscap) November 17, 2024
Michael Powell Recognized Its Raw Power
According to Far Out Magazine, Michael Powell, a filmmaker Scorsese deeply admired, saw what others did not. He knew what it meant to make a film that unsettled people because he had been through that himself.
“I’ve always liked Mean Streets, one of the great films. I just think it’s wonderful, that complete identification of that world, taking part in it. You never feel that anything is staged or done for theatrical effect. Scorsese just honestly stays there inexorably. It’s full of that,” he said in Mary Pat Kelly’s book, Martin Scorsese: A Journey.
He added, “The English distributor of the film was frightened by it, like the way my film Peeping Tom frightened them. They didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I think they sold it off to choppers or something.”
In reality, that discomfort, though, did not hold the film back and if anything, it made it sharper. It helped define Scorsese’s voice which later became even more rough and unfiltered and truth be told, this was just his beginning.
The fear some had of this film said more about them than the film itself. Mean Streets was never dangerous because of guns or blood. It was dangerous because it told the truth without blinking and back then, that was enough to scare the ones holding the keys.
For more such stories, check out Hollywood News
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