February 25, 2026
SIFF, Festa Italiana, and Greg Olson Productions Present
MARTIN SCORSESE
Mean Streets (1973) Martin Scorsese: See, the whole idea was to make a story of a modern saint, a saint in his own society, but his society happens to be gangsters. You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. Charlie has to get through his pride. He understand that spirituality and practice is not limited to the actual edifice of the literal church. But out on the street you can’t choose your own penance. He thinks he can, but penance comes when you least expect it, from a quarter that you can never anticipate. I think the key to compassion is denial of the self. Charlie’s trap is thinking that his care for Johnny Boy can be his penance, for his own redemption, his own spiritual use. The good priests I knew always put their egos aside. Once you do that, there’s only need—the needs of others—and questions of choosing penance or what compassion is or isn’t fall away. They become meaningless. In my Little Italy experience certain people were aligned with certain families. People with power, and if somebody hit somebody, or did something, not just on the street level, not just kids, the settling up was done, usually in the old way, between the different groups. Lives were run that way. It’s a very tough way of living. We walked on tightropes, careful to respect the right people. There were good citizens, there were guys out of town who couldn’t come back, there were guys who were dead. I was in the middle of it, trying to understand how one should behave in life. What is right, and what is wrong? How do you have a sense of dignity in that world? Bob De Niro said less than, say, Harvey Keitel and me, we would talk for hours. But Bob knew specifically everything that I knew when I was growing up. And to this day, it’s beyond finishing each other’s sentences, it’s like we just look at each other, and shake our heads sometimes and move on. And yet Bob could be extremely articulate about things. It became the three of us— Harvey, Bob, and me—up through the 70s. We were almost like the same person. Mean Streets shaped my style. Pop music, some Italian folk songs, and some opera. The music was very important. And also the cutting with the music, with the emotions. It was all designed. This series is authorized by Martin Scorsese and Sikelia Productions, and co curated by Martin Scorsese and Greg Olson. Thanks to The New Yorker poet, film curator and teacher Tova Gannana for her film essay, and to series coordinator Kendal Gabel.
MAESTRO OF CINEMA
Directed by: Martin Scorsese Screenplay by: Martin Scorsese & Mardik Martin Cinematography by: Kent Wakeford Edited by: Sidney Levin & Martin Scorsese THE PLAYERS: Robert De Niro as Johnny Boy Harvey Keitel as Charlie David Proval as Tony Amy Robinson as Teresa Richard Romanus as Michael Cesare Denova as Giovanni Victor Argo as Mario George Memmoli as Joey David Carradine as Drunk Robert Carradine as Boy with Gun Catherine Scorsese as Woman on Stairs Martin Scorsese as Jimmy Shorts