Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets burst on to cinema screens 50 years ago, a cacophony of soundtrack, film styles, religion and violence which firmly established the young filmmaker as cut from a different kind of cloth.
Like every screen pioneer before him – from early film illusionist Georges Méliès to the 1950s’ French New Wave filmmakers – Scorsese was testing out a range of cinematic possibilities.
In the opening minutes, a studio set with blue lighting (denoting night time) perfectly creates the atmosphere for the modest apartment of small-time gangster Charlie (Harvey Keitel).
