What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?

What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963)

** (out of 4)

First film from Martin Scorsese about a writer who buys a painting and soon his obsession with it leads to writers block. There's not too much going on here but I guess that's to be expected with a student film. The camera-work and editing are nice.

It's Not Just You, Murray! (1964)

*** (out of 4)

Martin Scorsese's second short is a nice homage to the gangster pictures from Warner. A middle aged gangster looks back over his life from the start of his career to the present. If you're a fan of the Warner gangster pictures then you'll enjoy this short film with all the references to those earlier pictures.

I found this first short of the brilliant Martin Scorcese very odd, very odd indeed. Although it is a student film, I loved this cartoonish, "woody allenish" (or Jewish comedy) side of Scorcese, and I would really like to see more.

Unfortunately, we still haven't (I'm not complaining though), and that leads us to the question: "what if Scorcese had stayed on the comedy path?", great things i'm sure.

Didn't like the ending though, but enjoyed very much the repetitive actions of the friend and the bizarre montage of the boat.

As I said, this is a very enjoyable short, I recommend it (if anyone cares).

PS: This is my first review, that's why it stinks.

PS2: I would re read this review listing to "Wouldn't it be nice" by the Beach Boys.

This cute, inventive student film is Scorsese's first time behind the camera and he's already ahead of his time. His techniques pertaining to narration and, generally, his way of telling the story are as auspicious and new in a film from 1963 as are his stylish placement of the camera.

The story is odd, the cinematography is odd, even the actors are odd. It's a great debut. Like a lot of directors in his ranks, Scorsese does not begin his filmography with the most hard-hitting and serious of his work. He begins with the lighter side to his cinematic voice and manages to keep it above fluff.

I wouldn't say that What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? is one of Scorsese's best short films, but it shows his earliest roots as a filmmaker as being inventive and very wacky ones indeed. His editing style here with Robert Hunsicker completely abandons any reason for convention and just bounces around somewhere in that sweet, strange realm between the avant garde and a cartoon. It deals with a man who basically has trouble sleeping, eating, and most of all writing, but then he meets a girl, but that too doesn't work out too well. There's no real 'plot' at all to describe, as Scorsese is not in the frame of mind here to go by one. It's got that style of improv-comedy that is almost like someone from the beats, only working with a more visual aesthetic here.

Sometimes its just a little too 'hip' for its own good, and the signs of first-time amateur hour almost comes into frame. But it's still a Scorsese picture all the way, with one shot that pans around the guy sitting down seeming to recall other shots in his oeuvre. Maybe the funniest part of the film though is, in the narration, how the guy keeps on referring to 'his friend(s)', to which Scorsese repeatedly cuts back to this older guy in sunglasses, who says his lines perfectly dead-pan. I was very glad to see it, even if- of course- it's not flawless, far from it. It's a quickie made on the fly, but it's got some good grit to it, and even a little musical number thrown in (the one time in the film where it actually doesn't cut TOO crazily from one spot to the next, one of the film's odd charms).

Scorsese, you're a funny guy...

He got funnier later in his career, that's for sure, but for an early short film made when the legend was only 20, it's not bad. It follows a neurotic guy as he narrates his life that's uneventful, but he perceives it to be chaotic. It feels sort of like a prototype for the kind of thing that Woody Allen would essentially make a career out of (did Scorsese beat him to the punch? I don't know of many Woody Allen films that were written or directed before the late 1960s).

It's got some neat editing, and a certain amount of style that makes it better than the average short film made this long ago. There's nothing amazing to be found here, but it's decent enough and made me chuckle a couple of times, so that's something.