New Hollywood Cinema: Mean Streets

Abstract

Mean Streets made Scorsese’s reputation. As an individual text, the film presents an intensively resonant correlation of style, structure and meaning. As an example of film authorship, it bodies forth the maturation of Scorsese’s authorial discourse. The film, however, is no less paradigmatic of New Hollywood Cinema, and needs also to be discussed in relation to that particular phase of filmmaking and the debates that surround it.