In 2019, amid all the brouhaha about The Irishman finally reuniting legendary director Martin Scorsese with two of the cast members most celebrated for their collaborations with him, namely Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, there was a far less well-publicized rekindling of an even more longstanding working relationship: the reunion of Scorsese with Harvey Keitel. Although he had only appeared in five of Scorsese’s films, Keitel’s history with the storied filmmaker stretched back a full six years longer than De Niro’s, all the way back to his low-key 1967 feature debut, Who’s That Knocking at My Door. Long before Mean Streets, this was the film that set the blueprint for the illustrious directorial career that was to follow, establishing many of the themes that were to become hallmarks of Scorsese’s films, such as Catholic guilt, unsuccessful longing for redemption and male lack of consideration for female sexuality.
The film began shooting in New York in 1965, as Scorsese was working towards his Master of Fine Arts degree in Film at New York University. It centers on JR (Keitel), a young, Catholic, Italian American who spends most of his time in his native Lower Manhattan drinking and play-fighting with ne’er-do-well friends including Joey (Lennard Kuras), Sally Gaga (Michael Scala) and Harry (Harry Northup, later to rise to greater prominence as Travis Bickle’s acquaintance, Doughboy, in Taxi Driver). One day, on the ferry back to Manhattan from Staten Island, he meets a young woman known only as the Girl (Zina Bethune), to whom he is immediately attracted and with whom he strikes up a rapport after some initial difficulty. They start dating and after a time, begin to fall in love with each other. His Catholic values then cause him to withdraw from her after she tells him that she was raped some years previously by her then-boyfriend (he is only interested in dating “girls” who are chaste virgins rather than “broads” who have engaged in sexual activity, even unwillingly). After a period of some soul-searching, he tells her he “forgives” her for this and wants to marry her. However, she (rightfully) tells him that she should not have to be “forgiven” and rebuffs his proposal, causing him to seek solace in his first love, the Catholic Church.
The film has several scenes that stylistically foreshadow later, better-known Scorsese films. A jump cut that occurs when JR rests his head on the Girl’s futon is almost identical to a jump cut that occurs when Charlie (Keitel again) lies down to sleep at the beginning of Mean Streets. The way in which a radio broadcast featuring music and a DJ’s commentary plays non-diegetically over street footage during the second scene prefigures the latter film’s closing scene by six years. The scenes of JR courting the Girl are similar to the scene in Taxi Driver in which Travis and Betsy go for coffee together, and give an indication of how a relationship between those latter two characters might have panned out if Travis had not ruined their follow-up date so sociopathically.
Who’s That Knocking at My Door also includes some glaring, partly successful utilizations of filmic technique on Scorsese’s part, which is, to a large extent, to be expected as he was still in film school. One scene demonstrates what idiots JR and his friends are by showing them getting drunk, dancing around to Ray Barretto’s “El Watusi” and shooting their empty beer bottles; this ends with a match cut to close-ups of posters for John Wayne westerns outside a movie theater where JR and the Girl are on a date. The implication is that these young men are gullible fantasists who imagine themselves as Wayne-type characters, and Scorsese makes the connection so blatantly it is practically being stated out loud. As JR and the Girl are leaving the theater, he expounds to her his aforementioned distinction between “girls” and “broads.”
Midway through this monologue, Scorsese cuts away to a scene of JR cavorting naked in an apartment with three young women; the scene was shot in Amsterdam after the film had premiered, and the distributor insisted be added so Who’s That Knocking at My Door? could be promoted as a sexploitation film (the original poster shows Keitel lying topless on a bed, possibly handcuffed to it). The way Scorsese makes this transition as jarring as it could possibly be, occurring mid-sentence, is likely his way of highlighting his resentment at the commercial pandering. However, the direct cut from JR expressing his views on pre-marital sex to a fantasy scene of him enjoying pre-marital sex outline JR’s sexist, patriarchal double standards, almost certainly a result of his Catholic upbringing and faith. Indeed, upon the film’s initial release, Clifford Terry of the Chicago Tribune praised the film for “attack[ing] the hypocrisy of a religion-based double standard.”
We can see from this that one of the key themes of Martin Scorsese’s oeuvre, Catholicism, was a prominent concern right from the outset. Given that he initially considered a career as a priest, this is perhaps unsurprising. Rarely, though, are his characters prevented from experiencing happiness and redemption as such a direct consequence of their Catholic faith as JR is as a result of his in Who’s That Knocking at My Door. Following his argument with the Girl over her having been raped, during which he gets angry at her for her having (as he sees it) placed herself in such a dangerous situation, he gets drunk with Joey, Sally and Harry, and realizes what boorish, obnoxious idiots they are. He also concludes that he will never feel contented by a life spent carousing with these people, so by reconciling with the Girl and marrying her, he can redeem himself and, moreover, redeem her. However, JR’s misreading of the Girl’s priorities, which stems from Catholic doctrine about sin and atonement, causes her to reject him and him to lose his chance at fulfillment. He returns to the Catholic Church and it fails to lift his spirits. Scorsese keeps the film’s ending ambiguous as to whether JR’s evident unhappiness with the Church has been caused by his general feelings of dejection or by a realization on his part that as an institution, it and its double standards have deprived him of the chance to live a happily married life (ironically, the very thing this institution has told him he should most prize).
Ultimately, Who’s That Knocking at My Door shows us Martin Scorsese’s filmmaking talents when they were still at a highly developmental and experimental stage. He is clearly trying out different ideas here, not all of which work, and the film does not feel as fully formed or self-confident as later works within his oeuvre. It features some of his least subtle technique, but that can help the contemporary viewer gain an idea of the themes and ideas that most interested him as a 24-year-old writer/director. Viewed retrospectively, it can be seen as the point in his career where he first displayed some of his abiding preoccupations to cinemagoers (it would be difficult to say the same thing of Scorsese’s second film, Boxcar Bertha). It would be a far less interesting film if it was merely comprised of scenes of JR and his friends drinking and playing jokes on each other, as was the original plan. Who’s That Knocking at My Door is not one of Martin Scorsese’s strongest films by any stretch of the imagination, but it works well as a curio that offers a foretaste of greater things to come.
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