While studying at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Martin Scorsese directed a few short films, one of which was titled “What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?” (1963). In this short, which Scorsese considers his first film, a young writer, Harry, who has just moved into a new apartment becomes obsessed with a picture hanging on his wall. He becomes so obsessed that he has trouble writing and his “friends” advise him to throw a party to shake it off. He continues to stare at the picture throughout the party until he is interrupted by a woman who suddenly kisses him. Harry marries her not long after, and after the honeymoon they return to his apartment and he is unbothered by the picture. However, his new wife is a painter and one of her paintings of a beach happens to strike Harry in exactly the same way as the other picture used to. He eventually becomes so preoccupied with this painting that in the final scene, he seems to have somehow become part of it and is seen from afar swimming in the water.
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Scorsese uses both still photography and moving pictures to create the visual portion of this film. One technique he seems to favor is isolating the elements that make up a shot. For example, at the beginning he shows us Harry’s new apartment, completely bare with nothing on the walls. Frame by frame he creates the room in which the story will take place.
If nothing else, this effect helps us realize how proud Harry is of the home he’s created for himself, which heightens the foreshadowing at the end of the sequence. Harry says, “Boy, a real studio-like place where I can write, and all.” Immediately his bookshelf crashes to the floor.
My favorite moment is when Harry is watching late night television, trying to distract himself from the picture on the wall. The entire room is dark except for the pale light of the screen on his face. The camera starts at Harry’s left, at about 3 o’clock. As the camera makes its way around to 6 o’clock, Harry’s gaze begins to follow it. We see his eyes and head swiveling as if to follow the camera, staring straight at the viewer. The camera and his eyes both come to a halt at 9 o’clock, and we realize that Harry is not staring at us, nor is he breaking the fourth wall as he does so many other times in the film. He is staring at the picture, and in a way we feel as though we have become the picture, or part of the picture, just as Harry will later.
Scorsese’s characterization of Harry makes the film a comedy. Harry is the narrator of the story and seems to be in charge of everything we see and hear. It is clear, though, that Harry is not a very reliable narrator. He repeats himself not for the sake of the audience, but rather to build his confidence and convince himself of what he is saying. He reminds us numerous times in the nine-minute short that he is a writer, because he obviously has misgivings about his abilities. Likewise, he attempts to cover up his paranoia by repeating that he is just “so sensitive” to his surroundings. When he really wants to convince himself of something that he is unsure of, he cuts to a shot of his friend saying exactly what he has just said. For instance, Harry says regarding the first picture, “It’s really nothing to look at, you know…Even my friends say it!” and then there is an abrupt cut to a shot of his “friend.” The suddenness of the shift is accentuated by the music, which is interrupted mid-note.
There are only four voices heard in the entire picture: Harry, a singer on television, Harry’s friend, and his “analyst” who seems to be a sort of therapist. Both his friend and his analyst, though, are really just Harry. Every time we hear the friend he is simply repeating what Harry said in order to affirm its veracity to Harry himself. When we seem to be witnessing his analyst giving him advice we are really only watching Harry’s memory; there is no proof that these words were actually spoken to him because, as his analyst says, “It’s all in the mind.” The friend and the analyst, it seems, are just figments of Harry’s “vivid imagination.” Both exist in a very limited, very dark space that is independent of the rest of the setting.
Scorsese uses this angle to make it very clear that we are only seeing the event as Harry remembers it, and it is therefore occurring inside his mind. Her speech is even introduced as Harry’s retelling of it: “‘Harry,’ she said, ‘Harry…’” Similarly, his “friend” exists in this small, dark space inside Harry’s mind and is probably not even real. That is, until the very end when the friend leaves this space for the first time and enters into reality; this occurs at the exact same moment that Harry departs from reality and seemingly enters into his wife’s painting, signaled by a loud crash not dissimilar to the foreshadowing sound of his bookshelf crashing earlier.
Throughout the short, Scorsese had been playing with reality by lying to the audience. Finally he allows Harry to succumb to the painting, letting him depart from his tortured reality and allowing his “friend” to enter it through a strange exchange between what is real and what is imagined.
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