Scorsese x 4: four short films by Martin Scorsese

What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?(USA, 1963, 9m) Scorsese’s first student production which was filmed on a shoestring budget and shows the influence of Fellini, Godard and Truffaut on the budding director. “It’s not just you, Murray!”(USA, 1964, 15m) combines the look of Italian cinema with the gangster film and is a definite step towards Scorsese’s later feature, “Mean Streets”(1973). “The Big Shave”(USA, 1967, 6m) was conceived as a protest against the Vietnam War and remains as one of his most enigmatic films. It went on to win the Prix L’Age d’Or at Ledoux’s Knokke Festival. “Italianamerican”(USA, 1974, 45m) belongs to a later phase of Scorsese’s career and is a highly personal and affectionate portrait of life in America through the eyes of his parents Charles and Catherine. It was financed by an NEH Bicentennial Award intended to encourage documentation of America’s immigrant communities, it was shot in the Scorsese family apartment on Elizabeth Street New York.