Aside from either his student film task ''Who's That Knocking at My Door? and Boxcar Bertha'', a directing project given him by early independent maverick Roger Corman, this was Scorsese's first feature film of his own design. Director John Cassavetes told him after he completed Boxcar Bertha, to produce films he wanted to make, just about items he knew. Mean Streets was according to cases Scorsese saw when growing higher within Little Italy. the flick features a memorable 60s soundtrack including ii songs by the Rolling Stones but complemented, as inside several of his subsequent films, by operatic arias & music from either varying genre. De Niro won a National Society of Film Critics award for Best Actor for his role when Johnny Son Civello. A film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

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