the audience applauded

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

A Major Disappointment

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

John Wayne fan J.R. (Harvey Keitel) and his friends are local Italian petty ruffians on the streets of New York. He meets and gets engaged to a girl. When she tells him about being raped, he is disbelieving, angry, and heartbroken. With his religious conviction, he can't marry a non-virgin and returns to his old thug life.The actors are all amateurs. This is Martin Scorsese's feature debut. It's a black and white indie. Harvey Keitel is still a student actor. Despite that, one can see the inherit skills of these guys. Scorsese is trying various camera moves. He's an artist playing with his paint. There is a real unpredictable sense of violence and there is his music sense. It's not polished by any means but one can see Scorsese trying something in almost every scene. There are scenes that ramble on but those have a visceral sense of uncertainty. The technical aspect varies and it can feel disjointed especially the dream sequences. The sexual dream comes out of nowhere which doesn't fit the rest of the movie. There is the ambient noise which may be deliberate but probably the byproduct of guerrilla student filmmaking. Keitel is exuding energy as the lead. He's the focus even at such a young age. I do wonder why the female lead has no name. To be fair, most characters do not have names. One would expect JR call her by her name at least once. Is it a continuing Scorsese limitation with female characters? I can only call up one strong female lead in his writing. There are a few more in his other works. It's probably a limitation of simply being a dude. It's hard to write what one doesn't know. Overall, this is a crystal ball that predicts Scorsese's rise as one of the great American directors.

'Who's That Knocking at My Door' (sometimes known as 'I Call First') - this gritty drama filmed on the streets of New York marked both Harvey Keitel's acting debut and Martin Scorsese's directing debut. Neither one disappoints and Scorsese experiments with an extensive array of filmic techniques, from lethargic dissolves to high camera angles that look down on the characters, all of which makes the film feel very much alive. Especially effective are some shots that voyeuristically track and pan between Keitel and co-star Zina Bethune as he chats her up. The film is far less enticing in the story department though. The basic premise is decent, with Keitel having to overcome some religion-based prejudices regarding the purity and innocence that he expects of Bethune, however, the movie was originally expanded from a short film and it very much shows with precious little else narrative-wise other than overload of scenes of Keitel associating with his friends. Keitel does have quite a curious character though, even if his character is not given the strongest story to work with. He seems unable to talk about anything but western movies with his girlfriend and many of his views on life (whether a woman is a 'girl' or a 'broad') seem dictated by western tropes. There is also a fascinating bit in which still photographs are inserted to show how he imagines himself as a western movie hero, shooting kitchen glasses. Without doubt, there is quite a bit going on in the film, which makes it one of the more interesting directing debuts out there, if not the most satisfying one by far.

I recently read the book "Scorsese by Ebert", in which the great critic examines the body of work of the great director through reviews, interviews, new conversations, and so forth. One of the more interesting bits in the book was the topic of Scorsese's first film, "Who's That Knocking At My Door?", which I had picked up a few months ago at a used DVD place but had not actually watched. So, inspired by Ebert's view and by Scorsese's own thoughts, I sat down to view this movie as a curiosity piece at the very least.I must say, it was much better than I imagined. First some context: this started as a short film in 1967 that was to be called "Bring On The Dancing Girls", about a bunch of guys and their typical guy experiences in and around New York. Then, the idea became to splice in a love story between one of the guys (J.R., played by Harvey Keitel) and a girl he meets on the Staten Island Ferry (Zina Bethune) and title it "I Call First". Then an exploitation distributor offered to distribute the film if there was some sex and nudity added to it, which Scorsese did, and changed the title again.Despite being cobbled together out of many disparate parts, Scorsese and his assistant Mardik Martin manage to weave a coherent and interesting narrative throughout. One of the most startling things is that, at the young age of 25, Scorsese already showed the technical command and a number of future hallmarks that would make him one of the most celebrated American directors ever. For example, the scene in which J.R. and The Girl first meet on the ferry is nearly done in one take, with only two or three cuts (an effective overheard shot as Keitel changes positions being the best) while the camera pans back and forth as they have their conversation on the films of John Wayne, French magazines and language, and so forth. The dialogue in the scene is also wonderful, and not at all plot-oriented - arguably because there was no semblance of a plot yet but also because both Keitel and Bethune speak and act naturally, as two people who are simply interested in what the other has to say. The ideas of Catholic guilt, the nature of sin and redemption, and the Madonna-Whore Complex figure heavily in nearly all of Scorsese's films. Consider Mean Streets, which is entirely about Charlie trying to reconcile his lifestyle with his sense of guilt and protect Johnny Boy from certain destruction as a form of redeeming himself. Or Jake LaMotta's inability to deal with Vickie on any normal terms. There is an early scene in this film when J.R. and The Girl are making out, passionately, and suddenly he stops. "What's wrong?", she asks. He tries to find the words to explain but can't, and mumbles about being old-fashioned, and not ready yet. However, Scorsese keeps showing us an image of the Virgin Mary on his dresser and alludes to what is really going on - she is still the Madonna, and J.R. doesn't want her to become The Whore. Another great, simple scene shows the two together at the table, and she lights a holy candle. "You don't do that with a holy candle!", he says. She just thought it would be nice. "What am I going to do with you?", he laments, smiling.She doesn't understand, but we do. The scene is performed breezily but there is a small undercurrent of tension due to J.R.'s religious principles. Immediately afterwards, Scorsese presents us with the crux of the whole movie - the girl tells J.R. that she was raped one night by a guy she used to drive around with, as we see a remarkably edited flashback of the event. His reaction is anger, and notice he blames her as a gut reaction? He cannot handle the fact that her Madonna image is now shattered for him. He tries to deal with it by getting drunk with the boys, but to no avail.I haven't mentioned J.R.'s friends much; their clowning around is very real; we all know people like this. If it seems sometimes that they are from another movie, well in point of fact they are. But they do help to establish J.R.'s character, and that's really all that matters. Michael Scala is particularly good as the leader of this crew, constantly irritated and harassing the others but in a good-natured way. Finally, in the movie's last scenes, J.R. drunkenly stumbles up to The Girl's apartment to talk to her. She is unexpectedly kind to him despite his earlier rejection, and they profess their love for one other. Then J.R. makes a huge mistake; he says he "forgives her" and will marry her anyway. "You forgive me...?", she says, bewildered. She knows it still bothers him and when she confronts him, he admits as much. Then she tells him it's not enough to just love her, but cannot explain to him why. Now it is HE who doesn't understand that there is nothing to forgive. Zina Bethune is phenomenal here; I hope to see more of her work. Crucially, the film does not end with J.R. realizing his error and marrying the girl, as we think it might, but with him trying to find solace at the the church confessional as Scorsese cross cuts with Christian imagery. Appropriate, if a little heavy-handed.All in all, this is a significant film, despite it's fractured history. It announces the work of a true talent distinctly with his own voice, and focuses on many themes that remain central to Scorsese's work. It is no masterpiece - there is too much fat, some unnecessary nudity (for the distributor) and the pace is far too languid, but as a starting point for examining the scope of Martin Scorsese's art it is invaluable.

The promise in crafting an independent feature film in America were richly and passionately exemplified by Who's That Knocking at My Door?, the very first feature directed by great Martin Scorsese. In 1967, whether or not anyone was ready for its individualism, it most certainly declared the onset of an essential new director of great consequence. Without a doubt, Scorsese's ardor-stained debut is at times too stylistically obvious, and it has clear flaws in form, however not a soul who feels real affection for cinema trusts that a perfect one will ever come. What we look forward to in its place are minute rewards of our fulfillment of dreams, love, humor and drama. Scorsese would move on to make Mean Streets, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy, GoodFellas, and several other movies that double, triple and demolish the impact this first work, completed with greatly impatient urgency when he was 25, but as with most independent debuts, nearly all of which overstep the bounds of self-indulgence anyway, which has yet to prove a problem for Scorsese, one must be objective with its flaws and not water down its lack of guile. The movies, in their urge to be fashionable, too repeatedly give us a false depiction of corrupt youth and juvenile delinquency and young romance, especially around the time of this film. In Who's That Knocking, Scorsese takes in hand the testosterone overpump of young men on a much more truthful level.Harvey Keitel plays J.R., a classic Italian-American on the streets. When he gets caught up with a resident girl, he fixes on settling down with her, except when he finds out that she was once raped, he cannot come to grips with it. More overtly associated with Catholic guilt than Scorsese's latter pieces, we see what materializes when Keitel's devout guilt complex pulls alongside him.As the movie opens, we cross the threshold into a society of young Italian-Americans in New York's Lower East Side who twiddle their thumbs and hang around and wonder without direction about where the action is. Sometimes they convene at someone's apartment to get drunk, watch Charlie Chan in a dazed state of bemusement and notice one of them who says he knows a couple of girls whom he could call. In this culture, still clearly under a suppressive ethical convention, there are only expected to be two kinds of girls: nice ones and sluts. You try to score with the sluts and you identify the nice girls on an unattainable, romanticized platform.The Harvey Keitel character of Who's That Knocking hails from this world but is not wholeheartedly of it. One day on the Staten Island ferry, he encounters a pleasant, polite blonde girl. They slip into a conversation that ranges John Wayne, reading French, and each other's aspirations. It is an excellently acted scene, a great deal of it shot in one take to keep hold of time as the two survive their awkwardness and agree upon a date.We steadily grasp that they come from dissimilar environments. She is a college student, reads a lot, lives on her own, and doesn't have a TV set. He is hugely nonetheless a part of the neighborhood bunch of hooligans. And then, eventually, when she tells him she isn't a virgin, he is unable to cope with this and he breaks it off. It is a very real concept, a guy not cultivated enough to break from the repressive reigns of his environment even in the face of love.Scorsese has always been skilled at directing delicate scenes, but this early he had certain difficulty with the more conspicuous moments. A scene late in the film, when Keitel goes to a church and kisses a nail on a crucifix and blood drips, is clumsily unnatural. For another absurdly incongruous scene, on the other hand, Scorsese does not merit fault. In order to acquire distribution for his film, he was expected to shoot and slot in a nudie scene to give the film a leg up from the sexploitation approach, therefore he shot a what could I suppose be described as a dream sequence, exhibiting his fantasy encounters with prostitutes. It has the very opposite of anything that could be remotely considered structural function in the movie, save for its acknowledged stylistic competence.Like most Scorsese pictures, this character study which in some sense follows the pattern of John Cassavetes's work, is in effect a director's film. Scorsese has come a long way since, having honed his craft to a point where he is able to engross his audience in a story without hiding, and the go-for-broke energy of his style is actually what makes his films so ceaselessly enthralling.