Harvey Keitel - The first documentary - The first film
7.3 هزار بار بازدید -
11 سال پیش
-
Text of the documentary:Meeting Martin
Text of the documentary:
Meeting Martin Scorsese was like encountering a soulmate.
The chemistry was instantaneous and seemingly lifelong. They would make 5 films together over the next twenty years and their names would forever be associated with each other.
According to Keitel,
"Marty and I discovered when we met and became friends that we shared a very similar life. It didn't matter that I was raised Jewish and that Marty was raised Catholic, our place was beyond local religion."
The meeting took place one day late in 1965. While reading the casting notices in the trade papers "Backstage Show Business". Keitel came across an ad seeking actors for a student film at New York University.
Scorsese, then a film graduate student at NYU, had put together funding to make a student film, which would eventually grow into his first feature release, "Who's That Knocking at My Door?", he asked Keitel back to read for the role a second time, then called him back a third time, before finally casting him as the lead in his film.
Who's That Knocking at My Door, was filmed over the course of many years, undergoing many changes and different names along the way.
The film began in 1965, called "Bring on the Dancing Girls."
In 1967, the romance plot with Zina Bethune was introduced and spliced together with the earlier film, and the title was changed to "I Call First".
This version of the film received its world premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival in November 1967.
The role, J.R., was an alter-ego for Scorsese, a young man in Little Italy trying to find direction in his life, even as he kindles a romance with a young woman he meets, known only as 'the Girl' and played by Zina Bethune by earnestly explaining his love of John Wayne.
They become romantically involved, but he cannot bring himself to have sex with her.
When she confides to him that she had, a short time earlier, been the victim of date rape, he is disgusted.
To J.R., the fact that she's not a virgin makes her unacceptable, he must wrestle with his confused and conflicting feelings about her and about women in general.
His anguish at finding out that "the Girl" is not a virgin is painfully self-centered. How could she do this to him?
Keitel brings brilliant opaqueness to the film's key moment, when he decides he can live with her past and tells her so by saying,
"I forgive you and am willing to marry you anyway."
Scorsese shot most of the 35 mm footage with a Mitchell BNC camera, a very cumbersome camera that impeded mobility.
He opted to shoot several scenes with the 16 mm Eclair NPR camera in order to introduce greater mobility, then blow up the footage to 35 mm.
For Keitel, mightily frustrated by the limitations of court stenography, the chance to make a movie seemed like his ticket to the big-time.
In the film Keitel looks so impossibly boyish, that it's easy to forget he was almost thirty when he made it.
For Keitel, part of the pleasure lay in his ability to plug in so completely, almost automatically, to Scorsese's vision.
"It was right there when we met. I was asking myself the same questions he was.
What is courage? What is fear? The ultimate fear is of being adrift, abandoned and not being able to cope with it. One's ability to cope with these darker elements will determine the heights one will reach."
The heights for "Who's That Knocking at my door", included frequent trips to the depths as well, as funding for the film came and went.
Everyone had other jobs, so shooting was done on weekends.
"Harvey was very upset because he was working as a court stenographer and we were wasting his time," Scorsese recalled.
Zina Bethune, who was nineteen at the time, had been working as an actress since childhood.
She met Keitel at a screen test and found him a little shy. As Bethune recalled.
"He struck me as a very sweet individual, a very dear person. The film was shot during the frigid 1966 winter. Harvey had a kind of unsureness that worked for the character.
The character is totally unsure and not able to come to terms with anything because everything doesn't fit in his puzzle, which is what the character is about. Harvey had those qualities sitting right on him.
That whole first scene, with the discussion of the magazine and John Wayne, was totally improvised.
There was no script. Martin created an environment and a scenario and wanted it to evolve. Harvey seemed to go with that mode and never questioned it.
It was exciting but unnerving."
According to Scorsese,
"Harvey pays scrupulous attention to the smallest detail of a role and is always intensely supportive of the project as a whole."
Between the pauses in filming and the extended process of editing and then selling the film, it was 1968 before "Who's That Knocking at My Door" saw the light of day at the Carnegie Cinema...
Meeting Martin Scorsese was like encountering a soulmate.
The chemistry was instantaneous and seemingly lifelong. They would make 5 films together over the next twenty years and their names would forever be associated with each other.
According to Keitel,
"Marty and I discovered when we met and became friends that we shared a very similar life. It didn't matter that I was raised Jewish and that Marty was raised Catholic, our place was beyond local religion."
The meeting took place one day late in 1965. While reading the casting notices in the trade papers "Backstage Show Business". Keitel came across an ad seeking actors for a student film at New York University.
Scorsese, then a film graduate student at NYU, had put together funding to make a student film, which would eventually grow into his first feature release, "Who's That Knocking at My Door?", he asked Keitel back to read for the role a second time, then called him back a third time, before finally casting him as the lead in his film.
Who's That Knocking at My Door, was filmed over the course of many years, undergoing many changes and different names along the way.
The film began in 1965, called "Bring on the Dancing Girls."
In 1967, the romance plot with Zina Bethune was introduced and spliced together with the earlier film, and the title was changed to "I Call First".
This version of the film received its world premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival in November 1967.
The role, J.R., was an alter-ego for Scorsese, a young man in Little Italy trying to find direction in his life, even as he kindles a romance with a young woman he meets, known only as 'the Girl' and played by Zina Bethune by earnestly explaining his love of John Wayne.
They become romantically involved, but he cannot bring himself to have sex with her.
When she confides to him that she had, a short time earlier, been the victim of date rape, he is disgusted.
To J.R., the fact that she's not a virgin makes her unacceptable, he must wrestle with his confused and conflicting feelings about her and about women in general.
His anguish at finding out that "the Girl" is not a virgin is painfully self-centered. How could she do this to him?
Keitel brings brilliant opaqueness to the film's key moment, when he decides he can live with her past and tells her so by saying,
"I forgive you and am willing to marry you anyway."
Scorsese shot most of the 35 mm footage with a Mitchell BNC camera, a very cumbersome camera that impeded mobility.
He opted to shoot several scenes with the 16 mm Eclair NPR camera in order to introduce greater mobility, then blow up the footage to 35 mm.
For Keitel, mightily frustrated by the limitations of court stenography, the chance to make a movie seemed like his ticket to the big-time.
In the film Keitel looks so impossibly boyish, that it's easy to forget he was almost thirty when he made it.
For Keitel, part of the pleasure lay in his ability to plug in so completely, almost automatically, to Scorsese's vision.
"It was right there when we met. I was asking myself the same questions he was.
What is courage? What is fear? The ultimate fear is of being adrift, abandoned and not being able to cope with it. One's ability to cope with these darker elements will determine the heights one will reach."
The heights for "Who's That Knocking at my door", included frequent trips to the depths as well, as funding for the film came and went.
Everyone had other jobs, so shooting was done on weekends.
"Harvey was very upset because he was working as a court stenographer and we were wasting his time," Scorsese recalled.
Zina Bethune, who was nineteen at the time, had been working as an actress since childhood.
She met Keitel at a screen test and found him a little shy. As Bethune recalled.
"He struck me as a very sweet individual, a very dear person. The film was shot during the frigid 1966 winter. Harvey had a kind of unsureness that worked for the character.
The character is totally unsure and not able to come to terms with anything because everything doesn't fit in his puzzle, which is what the character is about. Harvey had those qualities sitting right on him.
That whole first scene, with the discussion of the magazine and John Wayne, was totally improvised.
There was no script. Martin created an environment and a scenario and wanted it to evolve. Harvey seemed to go with that mode and never questioned it.
It was exciting but unnerving."
According to Scorsese,
"Harvey pays scrupulous attention to the smallest detail of a role and is always intensely supportive of the project as a whole."
Between the pauses in filming and the extended process of editing and then selling the film, it was 1968 before "Who's That Knocking at My Door" saw the light of day at the Carnegie Cinema...
11 سال پیش
در تاریخ 1392/07/22 منتشر شده
است.
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