Martin Scorsese has directed an impressive cannon of innovative and controversial films. He combines a cineaste’s passion for film noir with appreciation for rich characterization and evocation of precise sense of time and place.
Grade: C- (* out f *****)
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Theatrical release poster
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Scorsese’s films have displayed such bravura with their dazzling camera, jump cuts, and vivid frames that the filmmaking itself becomes a subject of his movies. Even his weaker movies have boasted stylistic audacity, self-reflexivity and rich commentary on narrativity.
His first film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1968), was a semi-autobiographical drama about the relationship between a streetwise (Harvey Keitel), hung up by his strict Catholic upbringing, and an independent young woman (Zina Bethune).
After working briefly for the CBS-TV election unit covering Hubert Humphrey, Scorsese turned out his second feature, Boxcar Bertha, a trashy flick, sort of a blood-and-gore sequel to Roger Corman’s Bloody Mama, not to mention the more prestigious films it tried to imitate, such as Bonnie and Clyde.
The young Barbara Hershey plays Bertha, a small-town girl who falls in love with the young and handsome David Carradine and his band of train robbers.
Made on a low budget, the film is loose adaptation of Sister of the Road, a pseudo-autobiographical account of the fictional character Bertha Thompson, with screenplay by Joyce H. Corrington and John William Corrington.
Boxcar Bertha Thompson, a poor southern girl, is orphaned when her father’s crop-dusting airplane crashes. The Great Depression hits, and she soon takes to freighthopping.
A few years later, she meets Big Bill Shelly, a union organizer, and they become lovers. Together with Rake Brown, a gambler, and Von Morton, who had worked for Bertha’s father, they start train and bank robbery by accident, and eventually face up to the railway boss H. Buckram Sartoris in the South.
Soon the group become notorious fugitives of the law and are hunted down by the railway company. In the process, Rake is gunned down and Bill and Von are sent to chain gang. Bertha escapes but she is lured into prostitution.
She meets Von by chance in a tavern for blacks and learns that Bill broke the jail and is now in hiding. Von leads Bertha to the hiding place where she has brief reunion with Bill before Sartoris’s henchmen break in and crucify Bill.
Von then wipes out the henchmen and releases Bertha from the bondage.
Scorsese makes a cameo in the film as one of Bertha’s clients during the brothel montage.
Hershey later recalled they had filmed the movie’s sex scenes “without having to fake anything.”
The movie is derivative (and banal) even by standards of Roger Corman’s exploitation flicks.
Arguably one of Scorsese’s two or three weakest films, Boxcar Bertha is a minor exploitation flick, but it gave the then fledgling director the opportunity to work within the Hollywood system and paved the way to his rise in the upcoming years.
Paying homage to some of his favorite directors, Scorsese names two minor characters as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (who made, among others, the masterpiece “The Red Shoes”).
Scorsese has repeatedly acknowledged his debt to John Cassavetes’ dramatic realism and his boldly inventive style. In later interviews, he had reported a crucial conversation with John Cassavetes, who after seeing Boxcar Bertha advised him to steer clear of cheap, low-budget flicks and aim at more personal works that bear meaning.
Scorsese’s next (third) film, “Mean Streets” would become a turning point in his career, a personal work that would draw directly on his experience, and would launch a long, most fruitful collaboration with actor Robert De Niro.
Cast
Barbara Hershey as Boxcar Bertha
David Carradine as Big Bill Shelly
Barry Primus as Rake Brown
Bernie Casey as Von Morton
Harry Northup as Deputy Sheriff Harvey Hall
John Carradine as Sartoris
Victor Argo as McIver #1
David Osterhout as McIver #2
Credits:
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Screenplay by Joyce H. Corrington and John William Corrington, based on Sister of the Road by Ben L. Reitman
Produced by Roger Corman
Cinematography John Stephens
Edited by Buzz Feitshans
Music by Gib Guilbeau, Thad Maxwell
Production and distribution by American International Pictures
Release date: June 14, 1972
Running time: 87 minutes
Budget $600,000
Box office $1.1 million
