Director(s)	Martin Scorsese
Principal Cast	Harvey Keitel as J.R. Zina Bethune as Girl
Release Date	1967
Language(s)	English
Running Time	90 minutes
Report Card	Click to go to Review TLDR/Summary

The film opens with an energetic drum-beat on an image of the Virgin Mary in the foreground and a mirror showcasing an older woman cooking in the background. These figures – the older woman and the Virgin Mary – will continue to be juxtaposed in aggressive fashion as the sequence continues. First, simple cuts jump between the two of them, but as the drum beat continues, the film utilizes dissolves to cement the duo into a unified entity. The holy aspects of Mary become imbued in the woman, and the scene ends with the latter feeding a large group of kids as Mary looks on – the connection between the image of the “mother” and the divine has been cemented.

Immediately, this divine motherhood is contrasted with the next scene which starts with a weapon held behind a back – a symbol of violence. The drum-beat is replaced by the sounds of a radio. The editing pattern also shifts; this time the camera cuts three separate times, starting from a wide shot before eventually cutting to a single shot of a young man, J.R. (Harvey Keitel) standing in a group. Part of his entourage, Joey (Lennard Kuras), the person holding the weapon, waits for his opponent, a man from another group who stands across from him, to get ready.

The radio begins to play a rock song proper, “Jenny Take a Ride” by Mitch Ryder, as opposed to just an instrumental like the previous scene, and two fights among the groups begin to break out. The camera tracks on one of them and neatly captures the brawl in one smooth movement while the film cuts to the other scuffle happening in a proximate location before cutting back to the earlier tracking shot which now showcases the two fights in the same frame, one in the background and one in the foreground.

Among all this chaos, the title card drops and signifies the arrival of a brazen new cinematic voice (at the time), that of director Martin Scorsese. His opening neatly juxtaposes the ideas of the divine and the profane, a dichotomy that’s been ever-present in his work since. The seeds for the primary conflict have just been sown.

The film cuts to a shot of a market; a woman inside gets food ready – a direct callback to the “divine” connection generated in the first scene in the film between the image of the cooking woman and the Virgin Mary. The camera zooms out from this divine allusion and moves along the street before zooming in on J.R. and Joey, figures who have just been involved with violence. This duo enters a location called the “Pleasure Club”; thus, a distance between the Edenic and the sinful is reinforced spatially.

Inside the establishment, Joey goes to a table where a card-game is being played and asks the see the respective players’ hands. Upon looking at the second player’s hand, he claims that said player has lost and proceeds to beat him. This player, Sally Gaga (Michael Scala), is this group’s “runt” and has borrowed so much money from Joey that playing cards is out of the question. As Joey aptly puts it: “You steal from your mother, not me.” When Sally attempts to apologize, Sally reminds him: “Your priest you tell you’re sorry to. Me, you don’t tell you’re sorry to!” The dichotomy established in the opening continues to sink its fangs as this group is established as a counter-point to the holy and “good”. They are not the holy priest or the divine mother.

The group departs and the trio of friends – J.R., Joey, and Sally – convene in a bar owned by Joey. Yet, J.R.s mind is unable to focus on the conversation at hand and he seems transfixed by something else. A cut to a girl (Zina Bethune) smiling at him, yet located at a different location, indicates exactly where his thought lies. Scorsese cross-cuts between these temporally and geographically separated moments to highlight J.R.’s transfixion.

He utilizes a “double-cut”, a shot of the girl’s face which then briefly cuts to a close-up of the same, to reinforce the subjective involvement on the part of J.R. Our protagonist is utterly mesmerized by this girl and the conversation from the bar can no longer even be heard. The silence which replaces the chatter of the bar suggests this encounter is a dream and the girl becomes something “more”, a transcendent figure.

Then, the oneiric mood dissipates, and we along with J.R. find ourselves back in the past – the encounter between boy and girl plays out in its totality as the past usurps the present. The noise of a crowd creeps into the soundscape, informing of us of this shift, while the camera slowly pulls out of J.R.’s isolated face to reveal him sitting next to the girl. He keeps stealing glances at the paper she’s reading, but she notices as much and invites him to read along with her.

He tries to play coy and bumbles his words but indicates he’s interested in the picture of John Wayne; another “double-cut” emphasizes his fixation on this mythical western figure. She responds that the magazine is a French magazine, and the two engage in a conversation about foreign cinema, Italian and French, and the respective print media associated with the same; the conversation is fitting, given the film’s obvious influences from both the Italian Neo-Realists and the French New Wave in its stylizations and narrative conventions (or lack thereof). The conversation discusses the need for an English analog to these foreign media, a suggestion (or rather, a revelation) that this film, Scorsese’s debut, is an attempt at bridging a connection (and paying homage) to foreign developments in cinema.

The conversation continues and becomes increasingly stylized. The camera neatly moves from each party, framed as singles, as the two discuss the image of Wayne in the context of the film it’s from: John Ford’s The Searchers – notably one of Scorsese’s favorite films and one that will continue to remain in the “text” of his films to follow. ^[1]Schickel, R., & Scorsese , M. (2011). The Ford Connection. In Conversations with Scorsese. essay, Alfred A. Knopf.J.R. ,like Scorsese, is absolutely enthralled by the film and tries to discuss it with the girl who can’t seem to recognize it. He talks about the dichotomy between the cowboy protagonist played by John Wayne and the Native American antagonist and they both seem to agree that the latter is the “bad” guy, even though their discussion seems to suggest that both characters share a similar negativity. Thus, the figure of the hero is elevated and given leeway for participating in problematic behavior that is used to condemn the antagonist. J.R. touches on this seemingly unfair value judgement for a brief moment before continuing on the conversation; this (mis)identification of goodness and its opposite is a key issue that his journey with this girl will force him to confront and is fittingly set-up via this discussion of cinema.

The girl eventually realizes she’s seen the film and comments that she’s not used to liking westerns before J.R. pushes her on the issue and claims that everyone’s problems would be solved if they “liked westerns.” He makes it clear that a clear hero to root for against an antagonist appeals to him. This clear-cut value structure grounds him.

She acquiesces to his declaration, and the conversation moves on to the nature of the ferry ride they’re both on. She admits that she’s going on it to experience it as a “ride”, a view which he can’t conceptualize; the ferry to him just represents a chore – a break with familiarity for him.

All the while, the film cuts to-and-fro between him at the bar with his friends to this conversation with the girl where his mind remains. Tracking shots of both his and the girl’s eyelines reveal the depth of their growing feelings for one another and a dramatic overhead shot accompanied with a dissolve of the girl laughing set the stage for a grand romance. There’s a clear connection here and J.R.’s obsession with it rings clear.

But the idyllic moment breaks; Joey slaps J.R. and interrupts the latter’s recollection in an attempt to get attention back to the conversation at the bar. J.R.’s friends want go out and meet a “new broad” but he shows no interest. Why would he when he’s so focused on this bright, cheery girl who’s completely enamored him? Who would leave “Eden” to sin? This is the Madonna-Whore (the film would utilize the terms “Girl”- “Broad” instead) complex in play, one that seems to fit J.R.’s view of the world, evidenced by the valorization of Wayne’s protagonist and the western genre as neatly separated into discrete notions of “right” and “wrong”. Thus, a clear opposition is established between the worlds the girl and his friends represent, and the film truly begins as J.R. is forced to choose between these two distinctive modes of existence.

By focusing on the subjective exploration of a character, J.R. in this case, and his decision to “sin” or not, Scorsese is able to eschew traditional narrative conventions and focus purely on the mood of the characters. The basic plot – boy falls in love with girl and has to figure out how to deal with his feelings despite lacking a “grammar” by which to do so – feels so much more epic because of the way Scorsese directs the ebb and flow of the emotional battle that underpins it. By cutting between interactions of J.R. and the stand-ins for the worlds he finds himself traversing, the film is able to remain compelling even as “little” happens in a narrative sense; momentum is generated purely through exploring the subjectivity inherent to the decision-making process.

This is why Scorsese consistently frames the characters against stools (especially in the film’s first half). He wants us to compare-and-contrast between the choices; the “world” the girl represents is open to persons and allows a genuine relationship to form, while the other is more insulated and is less open. The former’s communicative possibilities open up the chance of suffering as distance between people is closed while the latter operates as a façade that protects as it conceals the nature of what’s being done.

However, that doesn’t mean Scorsese only uses visuals to do the talking; in lieu of explicit dialogue, he uses songs as a formal mechanism to reflect and reinforce the distinctions between the worlds and the consequences of their intersection. From the opening, the music is established as a “cover” of sorts to the violent behavior that J.R. engages in, a reprieve that transforms his sinful actions into something enjoyable and permissible; this is an act of “insulation”. But as his relationship with the girl continues, music qua reprieve becomes problematized and the soundtrack reflects as much; the score continues to play rock tunes but their function radically changes as J.R.’s traversal reveals the costs associated with remaining in one world versus another.

For a film-maker as important and relevant as Martin Scorsese, it’s baffling that his debut feature-film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, has been so eagerly dismissed (including by Scorsese himself) ^[2]Schickel, R., & Scorsese , M. (2011). Little Italy. In Conversations with Scorsese. essay, Alfred A. Knopf. when, as evidenced above, it so neatly portends the auteur’s interests and stylistic influences/tools. There’s the focus on a character’s subjectivity, meditation on sin versus divinity, a wonderous use of music to evoke mood – trademarks of the master’s oeuvre. While Scorsese isn’t as restrained or formally motivated in how he employs all his tools- freeze frames, slow-motion, distinctive camera movements, intense cross-cutting between scenes and jarring cuts within scenes at times are employed with abandon- as he would be later in his career, his ambition in “throwing the kitchen sink” at the screen in this debut certainly has an effect on the viewer especially in his utilization of the “double-edit” which succinctly achieves a subjective mood that weaves J.R.’s obsessions as a motif begging to be dissected.

So yes, while the film, as Scorsese suggests, serves as a “rough draft” of his first masterpiece, Mean Streets, it certainly warrants a broader appreciation in its own right ^[3]Ibid. given the way it forces us to focus on character as opposed to plot; the film is such a profound mood-piece, working on feeling over narrative heft in every major decision it makes, that it’s hard to take one’s eye off the screen. While the film sometimes lapses, namely in the amount of time it wastes in the sinful domain, that of J.R.’s friends whose intersections with our protagonist are far less interesting, varied, and developed as his scenes with the girl, there’s more than enough here to chew on and appreciate.

REPORT CARD

TLDR	Martin Scorsese’s debut film neatly foreshadow many of the auteur’s obsessions and operates entirely as an exercise in mood and style; plot gives way to character exploration and we follow a man who’s forced to find a grammar to deal with a world that seems newly foreign and alienating to him. While there are moments where the film throws so much at the wall that it forgets what’s already sticking and undermines its own rhythm, when it works it genuinely enthralls and captivates, making you forget about the small bumps on the way. What a wonderous start to a filmography as legendary and storied as Scorsese’s.
Rating	9.3/10
Grade	A

Go to Page 2  for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .