Almost Making It

On those few occasions when people under 30 are not watching movies, they are probably off making them. At universities all over the country, gymnasiums have been converted into sound stages, classrooms into editing cubbies. Although most student efforts are not good enough for general distribution, an occasional film is given a limited commercial run. A current example is a feature called Who's That Knocking at My Door?, made over a period of two years at New York University by Martin Scorsese, 26, a graduate student. The film's several weaknesses and excesses prevent it from being totally successful. But it introduces a young director who just may turn out to be one of the brighter talents of this eager new generation.

Drawing heavily on his boyhood in an Italian neighborhood in New York City, Scorsese has constructed a loose narrative about a jobless adolescent named J.R. (Harvey Keitel) and a wispy, enigmatic girl (Zina Bethune). J.R. moves in a world where Cadillacs park conspicuously in front of tenements and the guy taking his grandchildren down to the corner for a lemon ice is the No. 1 professional murderer on the East Coast.

At parties, J.R. and his pals drink vino, play with revolvers and have a good time with "the broads." While the others amuse themselves by talking tough and riding uptown to visit the whores, J.R. shyly courts his girl on rooftops and ferries. But he cannot bring himself to violate his strict Catholic heritage by sleeping with her. When she confides to him that she was once raped, he rejects her and returns to life with his cronies on the street.

Unfortunately, that street and its milieu overshadow the relationships within. Trying to combat a basically melodramatic situation, Scorsese goes too far in the opposite direction. He diffuses the action badly, destroying a good deal of plot continuity, and overindulges in scenes with J.R. and his buddies that are of peripheral importance. The whole of the picture is less than the sum of its parts, many of which abound with vitality and cinematic invention. Scorsese choreographs his camera movements with an exhilarating, easy grace, and his dramatic use of rock 'n' roll (the film's title comes from a 1958 hit by the Genies) surpasses similar efforts in The Graduate and Easy Rider. Such fragments are bright enough to make Who's That Knocking--and more important, Martin Scorsese--worth watching.

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