Boxcar Bertha (1972)

Director Martin Scorsese's second feature film, his first being Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967), Boxcar Bertha is based on the fictionalized autobiography Sister of the Road by Bertha Thompson, who had been a political radical and transit during The Depression. The film was made for Roger Corman's low budget American International Pictures, and Scorsese credited his work on the project with teaching him how to make a movie quickly and economically, it was filmed in about 15 days for $600,000. The film stars Barbara Hershey as Bertha, a beguiling, wild innocent, and David Carradine (who would become Hershey's real life lover) as the labour agitator with whom she falls in love. The movie also features Carradine's father John as a railroad baron, and both halves of the writer/director team The Archers, Micheal Powell and Emmrich Pressberger have cameo roles, Scorsese himself appears in a scene as a brothel customer. The slow and low key combine with periods of energy, while the films characters and creative execution outweigh whats really a slight story. Though all around an impressive exploitation feature. **1/2