Boxcar Bertha

This was Martin Scorsese's second full-length feature film and it is a decent one. It's about a young girl in the 1930's who meets and falls in love with a union organizer, who also happens to be a thief. Together, they form a small gang and begin robbing trains as well as anything else they can get their hands on. The fun soon turns to fright when they become fugitives and are hunted down by law enforcement officers. There's action and entertainment but not a movie that you would expect from Martin Scorsese. It has none of his trade marks whatsoever. But do realize that this was one of his first films and try to respect that. I do.

Rumor has it Martin Scorsese showed this film, his second, to John Cassavetes, who labeled the movie "sh*t" and suggested Marty work on more personal projects in the future. This advice prompted Scorsese to direct Mean Streets, the first of his many masterpieces. Boxcar Bertha is not one of them, but it isn't as bad as Cassavetes stated, either. It's an average B-movie of the kind Roger Corman would offer to his students (Marty among them).

Plotwise this picture has a more defined structure than Who's That Knocking at My Door: the setting is small-town America, the Great Depression is far from over, and a young girl named Bertha (Barbara Hershey) joins union leader "Big Bill" (David Carradine) in a violent protest against the people who are managing a railroad. When things turn ugly, the two lovers are forced to run for their lives, while still hoping they will prevail.

Hardly an original story (it's essentially the poor man's Bonnie & Clyde), but Scorsese does his best in making it appealing to audiences, shooting in beautiful countryside locations and obtaining strong performances from Hershey (who would later play Mary Magdalene in The Last Temptation of Christ) and Carradine, most notably in a sex scene that, according to everyone involved, was not faked.

Beyond that, though, it is obvious Cassavetes had a point: there is nothing that gives Boxcar Bertha that unique Scorsese feel. He just did his job without finding anything in the script he could connect to; even the religious iconography used in the bloody climax seems to have been tucked in for no particular reason.

Still, the film is enjoyable and worth seeing, even just as the product of a young filmmaker still shaping into the master he was to become.

Scorsese refers to this 1972 Roger Corman quickie--he shot it in the deep South in twenty-one days--as his "exploitation picture." Funny, that--if it came out today, it'd be the height of the Arty Independent Film. Barbara Hershey and David Carradine are this movie's knockoff of Bonnie and Clyde; the script ain't much, but Scorsese storyboarded every shot and hoo doggie! This guy was the greatest shotmaker ever, even when he was on Skid Row. Rent it for Hershey's lyrical style and the chance to discern the fetus of a genius.

Early, solid film from Scorcese with Hershey as the heroine, who along with Carradine leads a pack of hoods who begin as communists and progress to bigger and bigger crimes -- something of a variation on Corman's "Machine Gun Kelly." Carradine and Hershey give good, but not outstanding, performances. The direction is somewhat showy and involves a lot of movement, typical of Scorcese's more evolved style as well. Roughly follows the mold set by previous AIP gangster mama flicks, with the step up on the violence meter each succeeding film seemed to demand.

Interesting also that this is the only Corman/AIP collaboration I can remember seeing from this period of time (72) when Corman's independent operations were becoming more successful all the time (w/ the nurse movies and stewardess epics cleaning up at the box office). I can only think that they saw it as a continuation of such a successful collaboration that it was impossible to resist getting together again one more time (though Corman claims to have been so absolutely disgusted by their treatment of his epic "Gasssssss" that he would no longer work with them after 1970). Anyone with information on how this collaboration took place will make me very grateful by forwarding this information to me.

Director Martin Scorsese stages some beautifully choreographed violence in "Boxcar Bertha", his first studio film, but he had yet to break through to his actors, and much of the picture is stilted or awkward. Barbara Hershey plays Bertha Thompson, a teenage orphan in Depression-scarred Arkansas who falls in league (and in love) with a union organizer; they're joined by a black harmonica player and a Yankee card-shark to take revenge on the railroad company by robbing the trains. Adapted from Ben L. Reitman's book "Sister of the Road", Scorsese as a filmmaker is a bit misplaced within this milieu--the 1930s doesn't seem to be his thing--and while the film has atmosphere, it lacks visual assurance and nuance. Similarly, Hershey doesn't seem to connect with the Depression, either; with her dreamy eyes, flowing chestnut hair and penchant for throwing her lines away blithely, she's more like a Boxcar Hippie. Still, Scorsese uses her well at certain moments, particularly early on when she's shooting craps around a campfire, correcting a friend about her surname, or staring out a rain-soaked window. She also looks great chasing after locomotives, and the train sequences are all well-filmed. The finale, a slaughter out in the middle of nowhere, packs a visual wallop. It seems certain the youthful director saved his creative juices for this sequence, and his cinematic prowess suddenly flairs up. Visceral and expressive, this showdown turns the story around from mere exploits of low-class gangsters into something far more profound: a sorrowful human tragedy soaked in consequence and fate. **1/2 from ****