Boxcar Bertha
Short description
Set in Arkansas during the Great Depression, Boxcar Bertha follows a young woman left to fend for herself after her father dies. She takes to riding freight trains illegally, which earns her the nickname of the title, and falls in with Big Bill Shelly, a union organizer with radical views. Branded as subversives by conservative opponents and hunted by a corrupt railroad company seeking revenge against Shelly, the pair are drawn into a life of crime and constant flight.
The film is a crime drama directed by Martin Scorsese, the third of the thirty-eight features he has directed in chronological order, arriving between Who's That Knocking at My Door and Mean Streets. Roger Corman produced it for American International Pictures from a screenplay by John William Corrington and Joyce Hooper Corrington. Barbara Hershey plays Bertha opposite David Carradine as Bill Shelly, with Barry Primus, Bernie Casey, John Carradine and Victor Argo among the supporting cast. It runs eighty-nine minutes.
On IMDb the audience rating stands at 5.8 from 257 votes, while a critics' rating of 5.1 from 24 reviews places critical and audience responses fairly close together, both in modest territory.
What's left behind the scenes
- Roger Corman’s wife, Julie Corman, secured the rights to adapt the true story. But she and Berta Thompson never met in person. Negotiations were conducted through the door of a hotel room.
- During filming, Barbara Hershey and David Carradine were genuinely involved in a romantic relationship. The intimate scenes were not staged. On October 6, 1972, a son, Tom Carradine, was born from this union.
- In the scene where Berta distracts the guard with a flat tire, the prisoners subdue the warden and finish changing the wheel. When they drive away, it’s visible that the spare tire is no longer on the car. But at the end of the chase that immediately follows, the spare tire is back on the vehicle.
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