Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967) Film Review and Summary

STRONG 6/10

In Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967), we see Martin Scorsese’s entry into the pantheon of auteur debuts. Similarly, as you’d expect with a low budget film in the 20th century, the film is in black and white, but also relates to its future companions such as Eraserhead (1977) and Pi (1998) for its utilization of candid imagery and surrealist tone. 

J.R. (Harvey Keitel) is a Catholic Italian-American movie buff that is “in between” jobs and spends most of his leisurely time drinking with friends, such as Joey (Lennard Kuras), and reading Playboy magazines. Playboy and films both symbolize aspects of his life that he desires but restrains himself with for the sake of religion. He meets a woman (Zina Bethune) and immediately initiates a cinematic tangent from the basis of her foreign magazine. First drawing its international contents in comparison to Italian cinema with subtitles, he then reveals one of his vices in the form of idolizing John Wayne’s brutal domineering characters, particularly his role in The Searchers (1956). J.R. basks in the glory of the measured violence that Wayne consistently executes in his performances, only to discover that the woman shares an interest, or at least a familiarity, in John Wayne’s work. This precedes a particularly insightful moment where J.R. effectively discards gender formalities to accept that a seemingly petite and gentle woman could enjoy such ferocity. 

Scorsese crafts moments like this in a potently intimate fashion that places the characters in a spotlight with how he frames the shots. An example of this follows later in the film when we see J.R. and the woman engaging in physical romance; they lay in each other’s arms on a bed as the camera pans across different sections of their skin until they are presented as one intertwined being where limbs aren’t distinguishable. Subsequently, J.R. pauses the sexual engrossment to declare that he isn’t ready to lose his virginity yet, as he implies that he’s saving himself for marriage. He believes that she is following suit, but to his shock, she reveals that she has actually not only lost her virginity, but it was the product of rape. J.R. finds this unbelievable and goes off into the night to try to distract himself.

J.R. rejects his lust for love but accepts his lust for life, as he begins to hang around some new folks who bring Joey and him out into rural New York. This new band of characters that they lounge with for a bit are gun-toting, testosterone-filled and adventurous, a far cry from the duo’s hometown friend group that find themselves drinking and watching television every night. 

We are led to believe that J.R.’s youthful innocence is the main factor in the ignorant sexism that he consistently exhibits, and Scorsese makes this clear through his characterization of J.R.’s cinephile-status. J.R. and the woman are leaving a John Wayne film one day, when the lady makes a positive remark about an actress’ performance. J.R. is swift to dismantle her compliment by claiming that the actress was playing a “broad”. Before we can hear J.R.’s explanation for this, Scorsese bizarrely embarks upon a winded sequence of surrealism where J.R. imagines having sex with prostitutes. This is awfully self-indulgent for a piece of typical Scorsese commentary, as it presents itself as incredibly crude and shallow rather than poignant. Scorsese’s efforts for producing a signature style is entirely unrestrained throughout most of the film, as many sequences are forcibly given pseudo-meaning through montages and the juxtaposition of still frames alongside active moments.

Scorsese does a proper job at emphasizing that J.R.’s self-growth is irreprehensible. J.R.’s immaturity has instilled a desensitized set of morals that has put himself on a pedestal, where he occasionally uses religion as a scapegoat for his interior contradictions. This is evident within the film’s final act where J.R. returns to the woman to deem her “forgivable” for having been raped. This absolute obliviousness is of someone who has not grown into a man. It’s no wonder that J.R. seeks out John Wayne as an idol because it becomes abundantly clear that he is not content with himself, instigating his extremely unreasonable expectations of others to conform to his liking. Finally, here is a woman who presents him with the information of her horrific experience, and he doesn’t lend her sympathy; she lost her virginity before he did, so J.R. perceives it as a personal offense, where she is attempting to strip him of his patriarchal dominance.

You would never think that Martin Scorsese’s debut cinematic entry would basically be a coming-of-age story, but it makes sense when you review his filmography. Who’s That Knocking at My Door set a precedent for Scorsese to delve deeper into the psyche of self-proclaimed alpha-males, whether it is Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980) or Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). As you’d expect from a director’s first crack at filmmaking, Who’s That Knocking at My Door is quite rough around the edges, but it still has the makings of a master that Scorsese is.