Boxcar Bertha (1972)
Directed by Martin Scorsese
"Boxcar" Bertha Thompson, a transient woman in Arkansas during the violence-filled Depression of the early '30s, meets up with rabble-rousing union man "Big" Bill Shelly and the two team up to fight the corrupt railroad establishment.
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What critics compared Boxcar Bertha to
In the early 1970s Scorsese started out by following the period gangster picture Boxcar Bertha, made for Roger Corman's exploitation company, with Mean Streets, a personal story of Italian-American life, in the manner of his mentor, John Cassavetes.
But no: I refuse to believe that Scorsese, who made Boxcar Bertha in 1972 for Roger Corman, is unfamiliar with cheap pulpy cinematic thrills.
Scorsese has used a crucifixion as a symbol of suffering since his 1970 depression-era crime drama Boxcar Bertha, but here the victims are tied to crosses in the water so that they're pounded by waves for days.
For every Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and Boxcar Bertha there are dozens of Johnny Boys and Travis Bickles roaming the Mean Streets, dividing women up into the virtuous and the fallen.
Then again, I still find it difficult to accept that Scorsese was also the director of that Depression-era disappointment, “Boxcar Bertha” (1972).
Boxcar Bertha's oppressively deliberate pace is exacerbated by Scorsese's loose, improvisational style (something undoubtedly dictated by the budget), which gives the film a fairly amateurish feel.