Chi sta bussando alla mia porta?

Martin Scorsese is undoubtedly one of my all time favorite directors. He has a consistently great string of movies that span his entire career and Who's That Knocking at My Door is the very first one of them all. The movie itself is very good, but looking at it in relation to the career and development of Scorsese's aesthetically unique style of directing makes it even better. When you break it down it is sort of a movie about nothing, and it focuses more on aesthetics and visual nuances to give it a very unique feel that fits right in with Scorsese's body of work. But if you have to assign a storyline to the film it is about J.R., an Italian American living in New York, who meets a girl and falls in love with her. They have their ups and downs and the movie essentially just follows J.R. through his life as a city slicker, hanging out with his foul mouthed buddies at bars and trying to balance that with his love life. The story more or less takes a back seat to the unique visual exploration that is way ahead of its time.

If you're familiar with Scorsese, then this film would be what you would expect from his directorial debut. It is very raw, unpolished, and experimental. Thankfully, a lot of what Scorsese plays with in this film would actually carry through to his later films that were obviously much bigger successes. This film is essentially a gigantic lens into what would later develop into Scorsese's very specific style of directing. It mixes up a little bit of everything and almost feels like a rough mixing of all of Scorsese's unique visual elements that he has trademarked since then. Who's Knocking at My Door employs all kinds of techniques that we've grown to love from Scorsese. It deals out some long static shots, long tracking shots, and its fair share of strangely quick cuts. The dialouge has a very unpolished Scorsese-esquire cadence to it. It can't even compare to some of the dialouge of his later films, but you can definitely see the early formations of Scorsese's vulgar and quick paced dialouge.

You also have to give a lot of credit to Scorsese and the people who signed on to help him produce this film because of just how experimental the film was for a directorial debut. The film is far ahead of its time in content and style, and for Scorsese to take this risk with his very first film is something that is very respectable in any filmmaker. He didn't try to do anything on a large and flashy scale. Instead he creates a very small scale story with small scale characters and he does a surprising lot artistically with the little he has to work with. And it's also incredible that, to me at least, it works. Trying something so bizarre and different from conventional filmmaking styles of the time could easily crash and burn. But Scorsese pulls it off with his first film and makes something that is actually watchable.

Who's Knocking at My Door is a really good movie by itself, but it becomes so much more interesting when you put it in the context of Scorsese's body of work. When you do this, the film becomes a fascinating study of the beginnings of Scorsese, and for that I absolutely loved it. Being such a small scale movie without a lot of purely escapist entertainment value it's hard to recommend this film to just anybody, but if you are a Scorsese fan then it is a must see.

a definite must for all scorsese fans. runs much like a student film. Use of music is still very ruff in this film. Not nearly as effective as in mean streets. Many of the same ideas scorsese will later work out in mean streets. Harvey Keitel's performance is powerful. Filmed mostly on Elizabeth St where scorsese grew up and his childhood apartment. highly recommended

WHO'S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR? (3+ outta 5 stars)

Early feature film by the now-legendary Martin Scorsese... it sort of sprawls all over the place... melding all kinds of weird artsy gimmicks and camera styles... but the central relationship between Harvey Keitel and the pretty blonde girl he meets and falls in love with on the Staten Island Ferry (Zina Bethune) keeps the movie's momentum going, even when it veers off into interesting but sometimes pointless tangents. If you thought Quentin Tarantino invented the character of the movie geek who seeks to impress the woman of his dreams by rambling on with movie trivia... well, this movie will set you straight. You will also see hints of Scorsese's later masterpieces ("Mean Streets", "Goodfellas") in embryonic form. I hadn't seen this movie in years... but just saw the new DVD version and was amazed at how good it was.

I am an unabashed admirer of Martin Scorsese's work, and his first feature did not disappoint. Filmed on practically no budget, this movie uses a nonlinear approach to storytelling that predates "Pulp Fiction" by some 25 years. One can also see a precursor of Scorsese's later cinematic technique, and just a hint of his nightmare-world view of New York that is so apparent in his later works "Taxi Driver," "After Hours" and "Bringing Out the Dead." Scorsese's trademark—finding the perfect piece of contemporary music for each scene—is also quite apparent here.

As the traditionally-minded J.R., the young Keitel turns in a riveting performance in his first film appearance, as a working-class New Yorker torn between his cultural norms and his love for an intelligent, independent woman. Bethune is today better known as a dancer and humanitarian, but as "The Girl" she is utterly convincing and nothing short of ravishing, with a presence both ethereal and self-assuredly erotic. The meeting of the two characters is really a meeting of the traditional with the modern--something much on people's minds in 1968 when this film was made. It's interesting that in some places this movie was retitled "I Call First"—the gist of the conflict between the lovers. J.R. receives a piece of information about The Girl's past, one that he cannot put into perspective given his macho set of social norms. Scorsese throws in a dash of the Catholic morality and male-centeredness current at the time, and we have a memorable exploration of the place of culture and religion in determining who and how much we love.

If you're a Scorsese fan, this film is a must-rent. If you're uninitiated, see a couple of his later films first, then go back to this one for a look at two future giants—Scorsese and Keitel—on their first project, as well as an excellent performance by Bethune, who should certainly have had more featured roles following this one.

Here is Martin Scorsese's first feature film, and already, at a mere 25 years old in 1967, it is clear this young man had the determination and eye for visceral images, solid acting and a great ear for soundtracks. A rather raw and unpolished work, Who's That Knocking at My Door works in other ways such as the professionally-done editing by the great Thelma Schoonmaker, another future Scorsese collaborator. In the lead role is a very young Harvey Keitel, who plays the role of a young New York Italian very similar to the nature and style of Martin Scorsese himself. Clearly, there was a special bond between these two that continued for years.

The plot, while at times veering wildly off track, focuses on a young couple attempting to overcome a difficult instance in the past that still looms over the future. With numerous Catholic images and references, this is one of the more explicitly religious of Scorsese's work but there is still a definitive drive behind everything. It is certainly worth watching for anyone who is interested in making their own film as well as any fan of Scorsese eager to know how he got to where he is today. Not always great, sometimes very powerful, this film still remains a strong piece of work that encompasses much of future themes Scorsese would come back to: Catholic guilt, relationships between street friends and the difficulties of romance.