CANNES, France (AP) Forty-four years after his Cannes Film Festival debut, "Mean Streets," Martin Scorsese has returned to the Croisette to recall his breakthrough film, one he says he only understood years later.
A day after declaring open the 71st Cannes with jury president Cate Blanchett, Scorsese on Wednesday joined a post-screening conversation for "Mean Streets," which played in Cannes' Directors Fortnight section in 1974.
"Mean Streets" helped establish Scorsese. Two years after "Mean Streets" landed in Cannes, his "Taxi Driver" won the Palme d'Or despite booing at its premiere and the reported apprehensions of jury president Tennessee Williams.
Scorsese says "Mean Streets," is pulled from his own youth in New York's Little Italy, and the relationship between his father and his father's brother.