Boxcar Bertha (1972)

Adrian Martin (0:30)

Exploitation pictures or B-movies. Straight off the bat, the opening credits tell us that the book is based on the autobiography of Boxcar Bertha, Thompson. Now, in fact, there are several levels, several alternative realities, hiding behind that initial declaration of the film, which I will unfold across this commentary. What I want to start with, though, is that this opening scene, which in a sense gives us the reason, or the background, or the initiating motivation for Bertha to start riding Boxcars, which is the death, the sort of tragic death of her father, this definitely does not come from the autobiography of Bertha Thompson. In the book, Sister of the Road, which has been mentioned in the credits very early on, in a passage about Bertha's mother, we learn that the father is elsewhere. He abandoned the family, and he runs a left-wing bookshop. He's not crop-dusting with a plane, and he doesn't die in a smash. Bertha goes and visits her father many years later in her life. With her mother, she too was a very anarchistic, free-living figure, and in fact, her and her daughter Bertha shared men, shared a lover, as later Bertha would share a lover with her younger sister. Well, that gives you a little indication of some of the juicy and fascinating stuff which is in the book, Sister of the Road, about Boxcar Bertha Thompson. And I'll have quite a bit more to say about that book later, because it really is an extraordinary book.

This, of course, is a film directed by Martin Scorsese. It's his second feature film, after Who's That Knockin at My Door. And I think it's fair to say that it doesn't get a lot of good press, even amongst Scorsese enthusiasts. Leighton Grist, in his excellent book on Martin Scorsese, he spends 18 pages on the film, and that's about approximately 16 or 17 more pages than most commentators give to this movie. I myself, somewhere in my head, sort of decades back, I had seen the film, and more or less dismissed it, or just put it in a box that a lot of people, the same box that people put this film, which is that it was, as Michael Henry Wilson said, a kind of a calling car film, an entry exam film, in which Scorsese proved that he was, he could be a professional filmmaker. And indeed, this film was made for $600,000 in 24 days, and he totally stuck to the conditions, which were both constraining and free that the producer, the famous Roger Corman, laid down for him. There was no chance of extending the budget or extending the days, and Scorsese had to pull all of his growing professionalism together to make this film.

Now, it's often said that this is an in-personal film by Scorsese. And the film comes with a quite well-known legend that at this time, in the early 70s, Scorsese had become friends with John Cassavetes, the great director, actor, writer, John Cassavetes. And Cassavetes watched this movie, Boxcar Bertha, after it was finished, and said, well, you know, you did OK, but you've wasted a year of your life doing this kind of crap, basically, this exploitation crap. And as Scorsese commented, well, John didn't like exploitation movies. And this led to Cassavetes' saying to Scorsese, make a personal film. You know, have you got something that's more personal? And indeed, Scorsese had been working for some years on the script that became the film Mean Streets. And Mean Streets, of course, is a completely personal film, in some senses, autobiographical, certainly drawing upon his life experience. However, I think we should be careful with this distinction between personal films and impersonal films, because there are many great films where, you know, the people who made them, specifically the director, don't necessarily, he or she doesn't necessarily have to have an autobiographical or deeply personal connection to the material in order to make a good or even a great film, you know. We think of, you know, some of the masterpieces that, you know, John Ford made that, you know, many, many fine directors make. But not every film is, is, you know, can be stamped with, you know, deeply personal project. So I think it's good to get past it. Now, it's sometimes said that this is not a personal film for Scorsese, but he managed to work in, as Michael Henry Wilson says, a bit of his own craziness into it. In other words, he gave it some touches, some particular details that are, that are funny, that are strong, that are amusing, that are strange, that are surreal in some senses.

And that these, in a sense, redeem the film. This is a particular way of looking at Boxcar Bertha. Once again, I would say be careful with that, because I've got to say that, like watching this film over and over, I've come to like it and respect it more and more. And I've come to like it as a whole film, you know, as an organic whole, not as a generic impersonal piece that has some good details in it. In fact, I think Scorsese did really, you know, quite impressive work on sort of turning this film towards his own interests. So what are Scorsese's interests, as I'm calling them? Well, apart from, you know, themes or issues that matter to him, like morality, like guilt, like redemption, like religion, like violence, and the history of violence in society. Apart from things like that, of course, we well know that Scorsese loves the cinema. He loves many, many kinds of cinema, and he champions and helps promote and distribute and exhibit many different kinds of cinema through the various involvements he has with film culture worldwide. And one of the forms of cinema that he really expresses his love and appreciation for is precisely exploitation cinema. And this is really what Boxcar Bertha sort of allowed him to really enjoy doing, is effectively for the only time in his career to make an exploitation film, to make a Roger Corman film, to make an AIP film. And I think the more you look at the film in this light to say, well, how did Scorsese imagine what an exploitation film is and what an exploitation film can do, the film becomes richer, it becomes more interesting and more fascinating from scene to scene.