Always fun to go through a directors filmography and find the eccentric flick in the bunch.
It’s kind of like discovering the crazy uncle in your family that no one talks about.
IMDB claims that star Ellen Burstyn got the power to make anything she wanted after she starred in The Exorcist and she picked a script about a woman who’s life is upended after her husband dies and hits the road with her adolescent son.
When she went looking for a director she reached out to Francis Ford Coppola who sent her to Marty. And this scene of the alleged meeting between the two of them is as good as anything in the movie:
“While impressed with Scorsese’s talent after viewing Mean Streets (1973), Burstyn still hesitated to hire the director, fearing he could only direct men. When she asked Scorsese what he knew about women, Scorsese replied, “Nothing, but I’d like to learn.” Satisfied with his enthusiasm, Burstyn immediately hired Scorsese.”
Marty is not just the best director in the best generation of filmmakers but he is, and always has been, a hell of a salesman.
How’s the movie? Great in spots, dull in others. Not funny enough to be a comedy and not dramatic enough to stick with you after the credits roll.
Burstyn won an Oscar for this and she deserved it.
I liked the ending and I like Kristofferson as the hunk with a heart of gold. But this is very early Kristofferson and proto-Scorsese.
Ask him about it and Scorsese will tell you it was a nice little picture and he got to have his first real movie set built for $85,000.
There’s a Harvey Keitel scene where he holds someone at knifepoint and is so violent and scary that you fear he might come off the screen and slash you.
Exactly the wrong thing for this mostly sweet movie but Marty is gonna be Marty man.
Burstyn apparently wanted a gritty, realistic portrait of a woman struggling in America. But this material is Hallmark up and down the line. Scorsese does what he can with it but this is a movie where the final boyfriend is a cowboy who owns a small ranch. It was never gonna be Jeanne Dielman.
Ultimately, it was exactly the kind of film I expected and is just not the type of thing I seek out very often. When I’m in the mood for something like this I would probably watch Sweet Magnolias again.
Anyway, someday I’ll finish off the Scorsese filmography. New York, New York is out there … waiting.
Dark Highways 
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