Scorsese Shorts. (15.)
Directed by Martin Scorsese.
What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? 1963. Black and white. 10 mins/ It's Not Just You Murray. 1964. Black and white. 15 mins/ The Big Shave. 1967. 5 mins./ Italianamerican. 1974. 49 mins/ American Boy. 1978. 55 mins. Out on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.
This collection offers a portrait of America's most acclaimed working director as a 60's film student and a 70's documentarian. The shorts are a lot of fun and The Big Shave, in which a man cuts himself shaving - a lot - just to make an allegory about Vietnam, is perhaps his first noteable work. You'll probably find the two documentaries more rewarding though.
The two early award-winning student films are the youthful Scorsese, the sickly asthmatic boy from Little Italy, hanging out with his arty Greenwich Village mates and getting some of those foreign film influences out of his system. Of course, student films are the pits; and the only thing worse than student films are award-winning students films. These two though are quite charming. They are tres-pretentious but have a bit of humour and that trademark Scorsese zip, which shakes off most of the preciousness. What's A Nice Girl is an almost Borgesian tale of a writer obsessed with a dull photo while Murray is an early dabble in the world of organised crime with a Fellini ending.
Scorsese gained prominence as part of the rebellious New Hollywood of the early seventies but once said that he would have been happier in the old studio system, working on whatever projects were handed to him and making the best of them. It seemed an absurd idea coming from a director known for projecting a very personal vision onto the big screen but these two show perhaps why he would think that: they have nothing much to say, but they say it audaciously.
It kind of gets overlooked, but Scorsese has an impressive record for making documentaries and generally knocks one out between feature films. Italianamerican, made after Mean Streets, and American Boy, after New York, New York, are two of his earliest and best-loved. The first is him with his parents Charlie and Catherine, in their apartment reminiscing about their lives in Manhatten's Little Italy; the second is an evening with Steven Prince, who was in one scene of Taxi Driver, selling De Niro guns out of a briefcase.
Both are basically extended interviews. In the first, the subjects largely refuse the director's attempts to control them; in the second, Scorsese makes clear how he is marshalling events, getting Prince to tell the same anecdote three times until he does it in the way he wants. It's impossible to watch Italianamerican without falling a little in love with Catherine Scorsese, who is the perfect Italian mama. No disrespect to Charlie - he's great too - but she really knows how to perform, to grab the camera. Charlie doesn't want to be seen playing up for the cameras, but is aware of her scene-stealing.
Prince is an enthralling subject, if less endearing. Though it is never made clear what exactly his role is in the film/music business other than he was Neil Diamonds tour manager, he seems to be connected to everything and everyone. His evening of anecdotes are funny and chilling with tales about heroin addiction and killing an attempted robber while working in a gas station. His story about having to deliver an adrenalin injection to somebody who is Oding, is exactly the same as the scene in Pulp Fiction.
Extras
New conversation between director Martin Scorsese and film critic Farran Smith Nehme
Directed by Martin Scorsese.
What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? 1963. Black and white. 10 mins/ It's Not Just You Murray. 1964. Black and white. 15 mins/ The Big Shave. 1967. 5 mins./ Italianamerican. 1974. 49 mins/ American Boy. 1978. 55 mins. Out on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.
This collection offers a portrait of America's most acclaimed working director as a 60's film student and a 70's documentarian. The shorts are a lot of fun and The Big Shave, in which a man cuts himself shaving - a lot - just to make an allegory about Vietnam, is perhaps his first noteable work. You'll probably find the two documentaries more rewarding though.
The two early award-winning student films are the youthful Scorsese, the sickly asthmatic boy from Little Italy, hanging out with his arty Greenwich Village mates and getting some of those foreign film influences out of his system. Of course, student films are the pits; and the only thing worse than student films are award-winning students films. These two though are quite charming. They are tres-pretentious but have a bit of humour and that trademark Scorsese zip, which shakes off most of the preciousness. What's A Nice Girl is an almost Borgesian tale of a writer obsessed with a dull photo while Murray is an early dabble in the world of organised crime with a Fellini ending.
Scorsese gained prominence as part of the rebellious New Hollywood of the early seventies but once said that he would have been happier in the old studio system, working on whatever projects were handed to him and making the best of them. It seemed an absurd idea coming from a director known for projecting a very personal vision onto the big screen but these two show perhaps why he would think that: they have nothing much to say, but they say it audaciously.
It kind of gets overlooked, but Scorsese has an impressive record for making documentaries and generally knocks one out between feature films. Italianamerican, made after Mean Streets, and American Boy, after New York, New York, are two of his earliest and best-loved. The first is him with his parents Charlie and Catherine, in their apartment reminiscing about their lives in Manhatten's Little Italy; the second is an evening with Steven Prince, who was in one scene of Taxi Driver, selling De Niro guns out of a briefcase.
Both are basically extended interviews. In the first, the subjects largely refuse the director's attempts to control them; in the second, Scorsese makes clear how he is marshalling events, getting Prince to tell the same anecdote three times until he does it in the way he wants. It's impossible to watch Italianamerican without falling a little in love with Catherine Scorsese, who is the perfect Italian mama. No disrespect to Charlie - he's great too - but she really knows how to perform, to grab the camera. Charlie doesn't want to be seen playing up for the cameras, but is aware of her scene-stealing.
Prince is an enthralling subject, if less endearing. Though it is never made clear what exactly his role is in the film/music business other than he was Neil Diamonds tour manager, he seems to be connected to everything and everyone. His evening of anecdotes are funny and chilling with tales about heroin addiction and killing an attempted robber while working in a gas station. His story about having to deliver an adrenalin injection to somebody who is Oding, is exactly the same as the scene in Pulp Fiction.
Extras
New conversation between director Martin Scorsese and film critic Farran Smith Nehme
- New discussion among filmmakers Ari Aster and Josh and Benny Safdie
- Public-radio interview from 1970 with Scorsese
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Bilge Ebiri and storyboards, treatments, and correspondence from Scorsese’s archive
