Who’s That Knocking at My Door [I Call First] *** (1967, Harvey Keitel, Zina Bethune, Anne Collette) – Classic Movie Review 5372

Writer-director Martin Scorsese’s 1967 drama film is notable as his feature film directorial debut and Harvey Keitel’s debut as an actor. Though obviously a very tentative, early work, it gets a lot of value for its ultra low budget of $75,000.

Shot with 35 mm and 16 mm cameras, it started as Bring on the Dancing Girls, a 1965 student short about a group of New York City layabouts. But next a romance plot was added in 1967 to make a feature film, which was premiered as I Call First.

Then Joseph Brenner proposed to buy and distribute the film in 1968, but only if a sex scene was added so it could be promoted as a sexploitation movie. So Scorsese shot and edited a montage of JR fantasising about bedding a series of prostitutes (shot in Amsterdam with an older-looking Keitel). The film became Who’s That Knocking at My Door, after its end song, written by Claude Johnson and Fred Jones, and performed by The Genies.

Keitel plays JR, a typical Catholic Italian-American young man on the streets of New York City, who meets a free-spirited local girl (Zina Bethune) on the Staten Island Ferry. He thinks she is a virgin, but one day she reveals she was raped by a former boyfriend.

JR now desperately struggles to accept the secret hidden by his girlfriend in a tale of Catholic guilt reminiscent of Mean Streets (1973).

This film was nominated as Best Feature in the 1967 Chicago International Film Festival, where it was premiered under the title I Call First, getting a rave review from Roger Ebert, as ‘a work that is absolutely genuine, artistically satisfying and technically comparable to the best films being made anywhere. I have no reservations in describing it as a great moment in American movies.’

Also in the cast are Anne Collette as girl in dream, Lennard Kuras as Joey, Michael Scala as Sally Gaga, Harry Northup as Harry and Catherine Scorsese as JR’s Mother. The director appears in an uncredited cameo as a gangster. It is shot in black and white by Michael Wadley (renowned for his groundbreaking documentary Woodstock). It is edited by Thelma Schoonmaker.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5372

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