“You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it,” narrates Martin Scorsese, the moral conscience of Charlie Cappa (Harvey Keitel). Charlie’s uncle is a respected and feared figure in the neighborhood, and with his loyalty and street smarts, it would appear Charlie has it all. He handles collections with his friends, whom we meet over three days and nights during St. Genarro’s Feast in Little Italy.

Tony (David Proval) is a striver trying to score wherever he can, but is constantly taken advantage of and wants respect. Michael (Richard Romanus) is an always dependable pal who runs the dive bar where Charlie hangs out. Johnny Boy (Robert DeNiro) has borrowed money from everyone in the neighborhood without paying it back, preferring instead to run up bar tabs and toss firecrackers in mailboxes.

Charlie has a relationship with God, and in an effort to absolve his guilt, has taken Johnny Boy on as penance, trying to help the kid repay money he owes Tony. Johnny Boy presses Charlie to go to his uncle and erase all his debts, but Charlie refuses. The uncle has just given him a restaurant to manage, and advises his nephew to watch out for people like this. “Honorable men go with honorable men,” he says.

Uncle also advises Charlie to keep his distance from Johnny Boy’s cousin Teresa (Amy Robinson), an epileptic who dreams of moving out of the neighborhood and going her own way. Charlie is already involved with her, and is divided over his feelings for Teresa, his responsibilities to his uncle, and his fateful compulsion to try to save Johnny Boy.

Directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Scorsese & Mardik Martin, Mean Streets came about after Scorsese shot his first feature length film, Boxcar Bertha, for Roger Corman. He screened it for his mentor, John Cassavetes, who had encouraged the director throughout a series of short films he had made while enrolled at NYU.

Cassavetes hugged him and said “Congratulations. You just spent a year of your life making shit.” He asked Scorsese if he had anything he could “pull together” that was of a more personal nature. Scorsese reworked a script called Season of the Witch he had written with Mardik Martin while driving around Little Italy. Friends introduced him to producer Jonathan Taplin, who liked Boxcar Bertha and had $300,000 he wanted to invest in a movie.

Unlike the films that have mimicked it (Amongst Friends, guilty, Boondock Saints, guilty), Mean Streets isn’t about gangster culture. Scorsese creates a striking sense of what a Sicilian-American neighborhood in New York was like at the time, and crime is only a part of it. The Roman Catholic Church and morality plays a central role. So does usury between friends, sudden violence in bars, and romantic attachments with the “wrong” girls.

This movie knocked me on my ass. Along with its documentary realism, DeNiro and Keitel put on a show. Their “Who’s On First?” dialogue is a thing of beauty, with Johnny Boy always ready with an excuse for a missed payment. Most low budget films make do with subpar acting, but this cast overachieves, with Amy Robinson (now a producer), and cameos by David Carradine, Robert Carradine, and Harry Northup (Doughboy in Taxi Driver).

The wall-t0-wall doo-wop on the soundtrack comes on a bit thick, but the film is highly creative. In one shot, Keitel jives around the bar while standing on a dolly, which gives the feeling Charlie is gliding through the crowd. Tracking shots and slow motion heighten the text, instead of becoming the text. The film employs terrific humor to counter the moral searching. This was the first “Martin Scorsese picture” Scorsese ever made, and it’s a classic.