“PORTRAIT OF AN EMERGING ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN”

By Raymond Benson

It is always fascinating to examine early works by a renowned filmmaker. Do we see stylistic and thematic elements that crop up more dynamically in the later, more well-known, popular pictures? Did the artist hit the ground running with a solid handle on the craft? How did the director evolve?

The Criterion Collection has released a compilation of five early shorts by Martin Scorsese that were made in the 1960s and 70s. All of them are 4K digital restorations with uncompressed monaural soundtracks, and they are a joy.

Two of them date from when Scorsese was at NYU film school. What’s a Nice Girl Doing in a Place Like This? was made in 1963. It’s not quite ten minutes long, is a comedy, and consists of a multimedia approach containing film, still shots, animations, and is obviously influenced by French New Wave traits of radical editing and jump cuts. It’s about Harry (Zeph Michaelis), who is obsessed with a picture of a boat on the water. He meets a woman at a party (Mimi Stark), they fall in love, and get married. Harry soon becomes obsessed with a different picture of the sea sans a boat. That doesn’t sound like much of a plot, but the presentation is funny and engaging. What we see in this little ditty is Scorsese’s flair for quick editing and unexpected characterizations.

It’s Not Just You, Murray! was made in 1964 and is around fifteen minutes in length. This one assuredly points to Scorsese’s later works (especially GoodFellas) in that it takes a humorous— black comedy, really—approach to mobsters. Murray (Ira Rubin) is a middle-aged criminal who relates his “life story” with flashbacks to Prohibition bootlegging with his partner and best friend, Joe (Sam De Fazio). Murray is constantly lying, deluding himself about the wonderful things that are happening to him—but what we see on the screen is a direct dichotomy. For example, it’s obvious that Joe is backstabbing him with Murray’s own wife (and fathers her children). Scorsese pays homage to Fellini at the end with a direct reproduction of the finale of 8-1/2, in which Marcello Mastroianni oversees an outdoors circus-like parade with the entire cast. The film is a step up from Nice Girl in that the characterizations are more developed, and Scorsese seems to be having more fun with the camera and what he’s attempting to say.

Next up is perhaps the most striking and controversial of his early shorts. The Big Shave (1967) was made after Scorsese’s graduation from college in 1965, was entered into an important avant-garde film festival and, according to its programmer, elicited quite a reaction: “People were angry. People were laughing, and I think laughing out of the horror of it, maybe.” The Big Shave is only around six minutes, but it packs a punch because it is Scorsese’s comment on the Vietnam War at the time. In it, a young, good-looking man (Peter Bernuth) steps into his bathroom, removes his shirt, applies shaving cream to his face, and begins to shave with a razor. As he does so, he continually cuts himself and bleeds profusely, although he doesn’t seem to notice. By the end, his torso and the very white sink are covered in red. It doesn’t take much analysis to see that this was a metaphor for America’s involvement in the war. There is no doubt that The Big Shave is a Martin Scorsese picture.

Moving up to the 1970s, the collection presents one landmark short that was produced for television and another one that holds cult status in that it has been little seen. Italianamerican (1974) was made for a series about immigrants in the U.S., and here Scorsese interviews his parents, Catherine and Charles Scorsese, in their apartment on Elizabeth Street in New York City, a stone’s throw from Little Italy. Catherine, of course, is known to Scorsese fans, for he has used her as an extra in several of his feature films (e.g., she’s Joe Pesci’s mother in GoodFellas). The couple relate stories about their respective families, how they came over from Italy, and what it was like to assimilate in New York. Italianamerican runs about 50 minutes and is engaging, funny, and sweet. Scorsese himself appears as an interviewer, and one can see how amused he is by some of his parents’ answers and actions.

American Boy (a Profile of Steven Prince) was made in 1978 during troubling times in Scorsese’s life. You may remember the character of “Easy Andy” in Taxi Driver? He was the smart-talking, hilarious guy who is an arms and drugs dealer—he takes De Niro’s character into a shabby hotel room and lays out various weapons for De Niro to purchase. (“Isn’t that a honey?”) The actor was Steven Prince, a fringe fellow who was a friend of Scorsese. Prince had worked as a rock group road manager (particularly Neil Diamond), an actor, and in other assorted odd jobs. For a while he was a heroin addict. In American Boy, which runs around 55 minutes, Scorsese and his crew are at the L.A. home of actor George Memmoli, and he films Prince telling stories. Movie fans might recognize one of his tales as the scene in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, in which John Travolta stabs a hypodermic of adrenaline into Uma Thurman’s heart. Apparently, this was a true event that Prince performed, and Tarantino had borrowed it. This was a period when Scorsese was heavily involved with cocaine and was eventually hospitalized. Watching the filmmaker in this piece, we see that he is maybe hopped up on something. The behavior of everyone in the room is erratic, to say the least. Again, a fascinating documentary, but for this reviewer, the weakest entry in the collection.

Supplements include an outstanding new interview with Scorsese with film critic Farran Smith Nehme, in which the filmmaker discusses his film school years and how all the foreign films were such an influence in the early sixties. (“And Bergman… every two months he’d come out with another masterpiece. It was annoying!”) There is also a fun discussion of Scorsese’s works by filmmakers Josh and Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems) and Ari Aster (Hereditary), and a public radio (audio only) interview with Scorsese in 1970. The booklet features an essay by film critic Bilge Ebiri, plus storyboards, treatments, and bits of correspondence from Scorsese’s archives.

For any fan of Martin Scorsese, Scorsese Shorts is a must-have.

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