I recently watched this film again, also through the Criterion Channel, after not having seen it since college. I remember when I watched it that first time and thinking, “This movie looks cheap. New York City looks so grimy, and the camera is all over the place.” At that time, I naively considered these flaws of the filmmakers, and enough to make me dismiss the film as a whole. Obviously, I have since changed my tune. Those things still remain, but some are due to budgetary restrictions and therefore cannot affect the merit of the movie as a whole, and some are stylistic choices. Most Scorsese gangster movies have a crisp look to them. NYC isn’t the problem, it’s the people who are grimy. Mean Streets informs us that it’s both, and that, in part, was the intention.

Charlie (Harvey Keitel) is a good boy – he works for his mafia-connected uncle, and therefore has to do some unsavory things, but he’s very concerned with his sense of morality and the salvation of his immortal soul. So concerned that, every time he sees fire, he tries to touch it in hopes he can withstand the heat. Anyone who has ever touched a hot stove knows that doesn’t go well for him. Since the Catholic Church will not absolve him of his sins without him actually confessing them, he attempts to earn his salvation another way.

Enter Johnny Boy, played by a nearly brand-new Robert De Niro. Johnny Boy is the cousin of Charlie’s epileptic girlfriend, Teresa, but more importantly, he’s a ne’er-do-well on the path to eternal damnation. Charlie sees Johnny Boy as his ticket to Heaven. If he can get Johnny to walk the straight and narrow, there’s no way Saint Peter would turn him away. The only problem is that the more Charlie interferes with Johnny Boy’s erratic way of living, the worse it gets. Johnny Boy feels coddled. Some people just don’t want to be saved. His antics not only set his life on a downward spiral, but he begins taking everyone else down with him – particularly Charlie. It all comes to a head in a drive-by shooting in those mean streets. Johnny Boy, Teresa and Charlie are all hurt, but Johnny Boy walks away into an alley where the red, flashing lights of a police car hint at his final destination, and Charlie walks out into the street, baptized in the waters of a broken fire hydrant. Only Teresa is unable to get out on her own, more damaged than the others, requiring the EMTs that get to the scene first to help ease her out of the car. Teresa and Charlie will survive, but while he kneels in the street, and images of the sinful life he is potentially leaving passes before his eyes, Charlie doesn’t even acknowledge the condition Teresa is in. And in that moment, that final scene, we understand how selfish Charlie’s quest to earn his own salvation truly is.

As I said before, my views on this film have changed significantly. Where as once I held Mean Streets with slight disdain, even considering it lower-tier Scorsese, I have now nearly flipped that completely. Mean Streets isn’t just a great film, it’s also pure Scorsese, through and through. It’s full of Catholic guilt, religious imagery (a chat between Charlie and Johnny Boy in a graveyard, where Johnny lays on a grave and Charlie leans against a cross, is particularly excellent), an internal wrestle between saint and sinner, a killer 60s pop soundtrack (one of the first examples of a jukebox soundtrack; the infamous bar brawl scene is set to the Marvelettes’ “Please, Mr. Postman”), tracking shots (that same bar brawl), and a whole lot of New York City.

I read that Scorsese wrote the screenplay for this film (not something he does often) after a talk with actor/director John Cassavetes, where Cassavetes criticized his previous film, Boxcar Bertha, for being uninspired. His advice to a young Scorsese was to make films he’s passionate about. You can feel the passion in Mean Streets. I argue you will not find a film so near and dear to Scorsese’s heart again until 2019’s The Irishman. It’s reflective and thoughtful. It’s genuine. It’s a filmmaker in the middle of insecurity, discovering his voice and, somehow, confidently firing on all cylinders. Martin Scorsese’s third film is, dare I say, a masterpiece, and sits alongside Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and GoodFellas in the discussion for his best.