Review of Boxcar Bertha (1972) by Melvin W — 20 Nov 2011

"Life made her an outcast. Love made her an outlaw.".

I'm glad I wasn't alive when Scorsese made his first two movies. Both his first, Who's That Knocking At My Door?, and second, Boxcar Bertha, are both pretty bad in my opinion. Maybe if I had seen them prior to all of his great movies, I would have liked them more. Watching them now, after seeing movies like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, it is hard to like them, especially Boxcar Bertha. It is nothing like you would expect from Scorsese. .

The movie is pretty aimless and the only thing that at all makes it seem like a Scorsese movie is all the violence. The movie follows Bertha through the depression. She falls in love with a union man and ends up braking him out of a chain gang, along with another acquaintance of Bertha and a large black man. The four then go on a robbing spree. .

This is an a really weird movie. It seems almost episodic and there's no real development of either characters or plot. Stuff just happens. There is no real pacing. Bertha hops a train, fucks a guy, meets another guy, kills a guy, robs a guy; who cares. .

From this point on Scorsese was the best though. It isn't how you start, but how you finish. With his first two movies, he was finding his way as a director and he definitely found it, because right after this he made Mean Streets and then arguably his best movie, Taxi Driver. The guys is definitely a legend, but I would still recommend skipping this one; I don't care how big a fan you are of him.