Martin Scorsese isn’t just God’s gift to mob movies. He’s also a master at spinning magical needle drops in his reels. Whether it’s Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla” in Goodfellas, Dropkick Murphys “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” in The Departed, or The Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun” in Casino, the auteur knows how to play deejay with his film soundtracks.
Which is most likley why one of his legendary films was named by Rolling Stone as home of the greatest rock-and-roll movie moment.
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Released in October 1973, Mean Streets is one of Scorsese’s earliest films and stars gangster fare’s usual suspects in Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, and David Proval. Set in New York’s Little Italy, the crime drama follows Keitel’s Charlie, a devout Catholic and small-time mobster torn between loyalty, ambition, and devotion to his increasingly reckless best friend, Johnny Boy, played by De Niro.
In the film’s opening scene, central themes such as the burden of Catholic guilt and the intoxicating allure of the criminal underworld are established. Following a voiceover from Scorsese himself — “You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullsh-t and you know it.” — Charlie jolts awake from a nightmare. Shortly after that, the nostalgic 1963 pop-rock hit “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes kicks on while a projector begins to screen grainy home videos.
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“This is where it all begins,” RS writes, “and really, this is as far as it could go. With this moment, director Martin Scorsese invented a whole new way to use rock & roll to tell a story, right in the opening scene of his Little Italy street-crime tragedy. Late at night, small-time gangster Harvey Keitel hears the Phil Spector teen romance of “Be My Baby” playing in his head. It’s the soundtrack to his memories, all his dreams and fears, all his Catholic guilt, all his New York groove.”
Today, pairing pop music with pivotal movie scenes might seem commonplace. But in 1973, Scorsese’s use of “Be My Baby” was something different, functioning as an extension of Charlie’s inner life. The technique would become a defining characteristic of the filmmaker's work, in turn transforming how popular tunes are used on the big screen.
“The song sums up [Charlie’s] world in three minutes, except we can already tell it’s about to explode,” RS writes. “Every movie tries to do this same trick now (Dirty Dancing even swiped the same song), but nobody does it like Scorsese. After Mean Streets, neither music nor the movies would ever be the same.”
Mean Streets is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
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