R, 87m, 1972

Starring: Barbara Hershey (Boxcar Bertha), David Carradine (Big Bill Shelly), Barry Primus (Rake Brown), Bernie Casey (Von Morton), Harry Northup (Deputy Sheriff Harvey Hall), and John Carradine (Sartoris). Directed by Martin Scorsese. Produced by Roger Corman. Screenplay by Joyce H. Corrington and John William Corrington. Music by Gib Guilbeau and Thad Maxwell. Based on Sister of the Road by Ben L. Reitman.

            Many young filmmakers start their careers in film with the idea that they will make their first film, and it’s all smooth sailing from there. This is far from the truth, as the majority of filmmakers have to make a film that they’re not passionate about to stay relevant or to pay the bills. This was the case when Scorsese was hired by the legendary exploitation director/producer Roger Corman, who had given many young directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Jonathan Demme, and James Cameron their first or second directing job. Corman is perhaps best known for creating a library of exploration films during the 1950s and 60s. These films greatly range in quality from being good such as A Bucket of Blood, Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, and The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, to being terrible such as Teenage Cave Man, Swamp Women, The Wasp Woman, and The She Gods of Shark Reef. In 1970, Corman released Bloody Mama, which was a minor hit at the box office and is one of Corman’s favorite films he made. The film stars Shelley Winters as Ma Baker, who organizes her four adult sons into a crime syndicate, set during the Great Depression, in the southern United States. The film also features a young Robert De Niro, in one of his early film roles. Following up on the success of Bloody Mama, Corman set out to make another female-led crime. His wife Julie found the perfect story in the form of the book “Sister of the Road: The Autobiography of Boxcar Bertha” by Ben Reitman. The book features heavy themes of sex and violence, making it perfect for Corman’s edgier tastes, only this time Corman would serve as producer, instead of as the director. Corman found his director in the form of Martin Scorsese, after seeing the grittiness of Who’s That Knocking at My Door?. Scorsese was hungry for another directing job, having not directed a film since Who’s That Knocking at My Door?. Scorsese had still been actively working in some capacity, working on films such as Woodstock, Medicine Ball Caravan, Minnie and Moskowitz, Street Scenes 1970, and Bezeten, Het Gat in de Muur. The film stands as an outlier in Scorsese’s oeuvre, while still retaining glimmers of elements that would later define Scorsese’s future work.

            Boxcar Bertha follows the typical rise-and-fall structure that is commonplace in the gangster genre. The film opens with Bertha’s father dying in a crop-dusting plane crash. Now orphaned, Bertha (Barbara Hershey) is forced to scrounge a living by riding the rails as the Great Depression begins. A few years pass, and she meets Big Bill Shelly (David Carradine), a railroad union organizer. The two fall in love and are joined by gambler Rake Brown (Barry Primus) and the harmonica-playing Von Morton (Bernie Casey). The quartet soon start robbing trains and banks,  gaining them notoriety, and they soon become the target of railway boss H. Buckram Sartoris (John Carradine) and Deputy Sheriff Harvey Hall (Harry Northup). The rest of the film shows the cat-and-mouse game between the Shelly Gang and Sartoris and Hall, culminating in a conclusion that exemplifies how bloody, a Roger Corman-produced film can be.

            This film is without a doubt a Roger Corman production. Sex, violence, and counterculture politics dominate the picture. That being said, this is a fun picture, that shows the earnestness and future potential of a young Scorsese. One of the hallmarks of most Scorsese films is the well-crafted hyper-violent scenes. As an exploitation film, the death scenes in Boxcar Bertha do not disappoint. Scorsese rewrote the entire script to give each character a unique death scene. At the film’s start, the violence is first shown to be like the main characters and is depicted as rather juvenile. It’s as if the main characters are playing a childlike game, oblivious to any real danger until it catches up to them in typical Scorsese style. The first murder of the film just sort of happens, very similar to the first murder in Bonnie and Clyde, it’s quick, surprising, and violent. As the film progresses the film progresses, the characters soon learn that the game that they are playing is stacked against them and they’re helpless in preventing the inevitable sanguinary conclusion to the game of life and death. Watching the film, one gets the impression that Scorsese took what he liked from Bonnie and Clyde and applied it to Boxcar Bertha, while still giving the film its own identity without coming across as a rip-off. The action flows quickly and mostly effectively throughout the film. The film also features Scorsese’s first martyrdom, in a sequence that sets the standard for future martyrdom scenes later in Scorsese’s career.

            Bonnie and Clyde, Boxcar Bertha, and Bloody Mama all utilize similar techniques to get their messages across. All three films are set in the Depression-era southern United States, to reflect the turbulent social unrest of the 1930s. The protagonists are gritty, anti-heroes, whose values clash with traditional norms. The establishments are corrupt, grim foils to the free-spirited protagonist, who are continuously chased down by the establishment until it ultimately culminates in a bloody confrontation. Regarding quality, Boxcar Bertha falls into the middle of Bonnie and Clyde and Bloody Mama. Boxcar Bertha has more compelling characters and the politics of the film line up far better than in Bloody Mama. In Bloody Mama, the characters are psychopathic and lack the charisma of the characters in Boxcar Bertha, especially those in Bonnie and Clyde, whose Barrow Gang possesses a Robin Hood-esque charisma. In Boxcar Bertha, Bertha and her gang fight against the rich, represented by the railroad barons, chiefly by Sartoris, the railroad boss. The opening scene depicts Bertha’s father dying in a plane crash due to the negligence of his greedy boss, who places profits over the lives of his employees, despite receiving ample warning from the plane’s mechanic that the engine was faulty. This callous act orphans Bertha, who is now thrown at the mercy of the Great Depression, where Bertha finds herself among the ranks of the poor and downtrodden. Despite lacking the charm and charisma of the Barrow Gang, Bertha’s gang motives are completely understandable, making them far more compelling than the Ma Baker Gang in Bloody Mama. What makes Bertha’s gang unique is in addition to helping out those in need, they also actively work to help the workers unionize. Big Bill’s journey from a railroad worker to a criminal is a critical aspect of the film. The character’s transformation exemplifies the moral ambiguities and complexities involved in the fight for workers’ rights and social change. The clashing ideology between Bill and Sartoris could have easily been your standard rich vs poor or young vs old oppugnancy. What makes the enmity between Bill and Sartoris truly work is in the casting. Sartoris is played by John Carradine, and his son David plays Bill. As Sartoris, the elder Carradine, with oily slicked back hair, well-groomed mustache, and oily voice serves as opposing fodder to David’s scruffy appearance and blunt delivery.

The main heroine played by Hershey, as a delightfully twisted individual, with a playful sweet innocent exterior, results in a surprisingly genuine performance. Bertha could have easily been portrayed as a bloodthirsty maniac; hell bent on revenge on the barons to avenge the loss of her father. Instead, she is shown to have a softer and gentler side that yearns for a real human connection, which life seems to deny her consistently. The contrast between the ruthless killer, and the spirited young woman brings to mind Faye Dunaway’s performance as Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde, and Hershey’s performance leaves little doubt that Bertha could run a crime spree, and it makes it one of the most enjoyable aspects of the film if you take it for what it is. Bertha’s quick transition is a prime example of the film’s inconsistent character motivation. Bertha’s first sexual interaction is an act of rape by Bill, who leaves Bertha some money in her shoe as she sleeps. Later in the film she is referred to as a woman of the streets in the newspaper, and she reacts to the article with dismay. Bertha later accepts an offer from Mrs. Mailler (Marianne Doyle) to “clean up and get some rest”, only to learn that she has been taken to a brothel. At first, Bertha is shocked at this, revelation, but rather quickly accepts her situation. As a Roger Corman exploitation film, abundant sex and nudity is a given, but the progression from virgin to whore feels so forced and unmotivated in the context of Bertha’s character. Sure, Bertha exhibits wistful behavior in the brothel, but that’s implied to be more about her missing Bill, instead of her situation. Like Bonnie and Clyde, the transition from young lovers to wanted fugitives happens rapidly. However, unlike in Bonnie and Clyde, the relationship between Bill and Bertha is not fun. During their first meeting, Bill forces himself on her, and the film unfortunately relies on a disgusting cliché, and Bertha soon begins to enjoy her assault. Their relationship doesn’t improve from there, so by the end of the film the audience doesn’t feel sorry that the relationship ended, rather they feel bad that Bertha finds herself in the same situation she was at the beginning of the film. The lack of chemistry between Bill and Bertha is not the fault of the leads, as Carradine and Hershey were lovers at the time. Had they been given a better script; their relationship could have been one of the stronger parts of the film. That being said, their relationship could have been a lot worse. It could have easily been a stale, banal, bonk fest. When production began, the only instruction Scorsese was given by Corman was that there had to be a nudity scene approximately every fifteen pages, which Scorse did manage to do without making the nudity scenes appear routine or shoehorned in like they did in Who’s That Knocking at My Door?.

            As expected of a Scorsese film, religious symbolism and themes are found throughout the film. The most notable example is the characters of Big Bill and Bertha, who are meant to represent Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Like her biblical counterpart, Bertha is a sometimes prostitute who seeks redemption in one man. In Bertha’s case, she seeks political and possibly spiritual salvation in Bill. This symbolic identity is visually represented in a black fundamentalist church, where the Shelly Gang has taken refuge. In a lingering shot, a Muriel on the back wall depicts a woman gazing devotedly at a figure dressed in white robes. The film’s conclusion further solidifies the grisly connection between Bill and Jesus in a sequence that Scorsese would repeat in The Last Temptation of Christ. The religious evocation was not lost on the two leads and Hershey even gave Scorsese a copy of Nikos Kazantzakis’s 1955 novel, The Last Temptation of Christ. Hershey would later be cast as Mary Magdalene when Scorse adapted the novel in 1988. Of Scorsese’s oeuvre, I would say that Boxcar Bertha has the weakest religious symbolism. Save for the ending, the Jesus/Bill Magdalene/Bertha connection feels tenuous at best.

Like most of Scorsese’s films, Boxcar Bertha has numerous references and callbacks to other films, most notably The Wizard of Oz. This ranges from lines such as “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain”, to the quartet main characters. The three male characters (Carradine, Primus, and Casey) even parallel the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, and the Tin Man. Both the Scarecrow and Bill use their intelligence and charisma to organize and come up with a clever strategy to fight against their opponents. Van Morton represents the Tin Man, as the most caring in the group Also like the Tin Man, his strong sense of compassion and justice serves as the group’s moral anchor, representing his metaphorical heart. Like the Cowardly Lion, Rake is first depicted as someone who becomes frightened easily. However, as their respective films progress, both characters exhibit a strong sense of loyalty and courage when it matters most.  Even Hershey’s hair is styled into Dorthey-like Pigtails. Another film that Boxcar Bertha borrows from is Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa vie, with some scenes being almost shot-for-shot recreations. This is most notable in the improvised interview in the brothel, the old man eating glass, the gag with the doors, and the fantasy mood that permeates throughout the film. Both films feature young women who are forced to resort to prostitution to survive while commenting on social and economic injustices that force the characters into extreme situations.

            Following a showing of Boxcar Bertha, director John Cassavetes turned to Scorsese and said, “Marty, you’ve spent a year of your life making a piece of shit”. While I understand where Cassavetes was coming from, I feel that calling this film a piece of shit is a bit harsh. Are there large parts of this film that don’t work? Yes. Does this film feel cheap and rushed? Yes. Is this Scorsese’s worst film? Most definitely. But simply relegating this film as shit is a bit far. Compared to Scorsese’s amazing body of work, it’s easy to discount this film and slam it as trash or cheap, but I feel that’s an unfair judgment. Every director or studio is bound to create one film that’s their worst. Take Pixar for instance, it’s easy to take a film like The Good Dinosaur or Cars 2 and blast them with negativity because they don’t meet the level of quality that has become expected from said studio or director. Even writers such as myself are not immune to fallacies. One of the harshest criticisms said about one of my reviews was regarding my Pocahontas review, where it was described as “good, but it lacks the Nick level of quality that I’ve come to expect”. I took this criticism as a chance to learn and improve, and Scorsese did the same regarding the reception of Boxcar Bertha. He took what he learned from his experiences of working on a Roger Corman exploitation film and applied them to his next picture Mean Streets.