"I'd just like to say...that this is a hold up."
Leave it to Scorsese to take what should, to all intents and
purposes, been a cheap exploitation film and craft something as unique and
deceptively deep as his second directorial feature ‘Boxcar Bertha’. Or at least
that’s what it was trying to do, the only question is; did it succeed?
A loose adaptation of the story of Bertha Thompson (Barbara
Hershey). Following the death of her father Bertha links up with a union
organizer (David Carradine) and end up running afoul of the law. Set against
the backdrop of the Great Depression they make their way across the country
under a life of crime, doing whatever they can to survive.
In 1972 Roger Corman was the most successful exploitation
producer in America, around this time he hired Scorsese, several actors and an
entire film crew, sent them out into the heartland of America and was expecting
to get another cheap, violent and quick film in return. But Scorsese had other
idea and that shines through immediately in his direction.
There’s a much heavier emphasis on mood and atmosphere
rather than purely on the action. Furthermore the violence was far from the
entertaining and senseless violence that fans of the exploitation genre would
be used to, there is a certain weight to each drop of blood and immoral action,
almost as if he wants to use it to reflect the inner nature of his characters…
It is fascinating to watch these early effort from Scorsese,
pictures in which he still hadn’t quite found his footing and was still
experimenting to try and discover just what kind of filmmaker he was going to
be. His debut ‘Who’s that Knocking on My Door’ and ‘Boxcar Bertha’ are the only
real chances we get to see that because very soon he would tap into that
formula and create his first masterpiece. But for now we have this.
There is definitely a weird sense of fascination to ‘Boxcar
Bertha’. It seems fairly obvious that the director wasn’t fully invested within
the project, by this point in his career the whispers of Johnny Boy and Charlie
Cappa must have been circling around his mind. The project is very much an
extension of the brief crime-wave-lover craze that permeated the early 1970s as
a reaction to ‘Bonnie and Clyde’. While there were some legitimately amazing
character studies like Terrance Malick’s ‘Badlands’ for the most part they were
intended as nothing more than sex driven, violent escapades to try and attract a
young audience.
It’s fair to assume that Scorsese used this as a launching
pad, having struggled to find another project to direct four years after the
release of his first feature he needed something to draw support for his next
passion project so he took up the role of helming a seedy crime movie. But
credit where it’s due you can’t accuse him of not putting effort into it. There
are a number of impressive shots and concepts within it. As well as that one
has to admire the way in which he undertook this exploitation picture and bent
it to his own style and vision.
If anything that’s where you can criticise the movie because
the director is most defiantly making a different film to everyone else. If
anything it creates a rather disjointed feel to the film and the moments of
directorial flare feel almost out of place. ‘Boxcar Bertha’ is also very poorly
structured, there’s no sense of pacing or development and ultimately it comes
across as somewhat episodic. It wanders form one set piece to another with no
sense pf purpose or reason. One can argue that it’s supposed to reflect the aimlessness
of Bertha’s career as a criminal, but with so little development or complexity
to the characters then it’s difficult to support that.
One can’t blame Scorsese for taking what should have been a
cheap throwaway script and try to inject a sense of depth and style to it, but
there’s ultimately so little to back the film up that I continually get the
impression that everyone’s talent it being wasted. The performances are fine
for what they have to be, but the question is could they be better with a
superior script? Could this entire film be better with a different script?
Fairly senseless if not sometimes innovative.
Result: 5/10
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