The Big Shave, Martin Scorsese, 1967

Genre Conventions Research: The Big Shave

Fading in from white, Scorsese begins his seminal film The Big Shave by presenting us with several shots of various appliances and objects situated in and around a common family bathroom, such as water faucets, a sink, a shower head, etc. These shots are edited together in time with Bunny Berigan’s seminal jazz hit  I Can’t Get Started (With You). This song, which is grand, booming and grandiose in its’ nature, serves almost as a stark contrast to the boring, bland and banal images which we are seeing. The music and the visuals simply do not match. There is a strangeness and an oddness here. Scorsese, through the use of the visuals and the music, could be inferring that something bizarre is about to unfold.

The music then builds in tempo as we see a young man, dressed in a white vest, enter the bathroom. He is shown to be yawning and scratching his hair. Scorsese, through establishing this unnamed character, along with the images of the bathroom, may be trying to establish verisimilitude, and to give the events depicted as realistic and random a sense as possible.

The young man is then shown taking off his vest. This action is repeated three times, each time from a different angle. This use of repetition may be Scorsese attempting to draw our attention, and trying to imply that the taking off of the vest is key, and that something is going to happen as a result of this, by implication, perhaps the big shave of the title?

The young man is then shown applying shaving foam. This action is presented through use of regular cuts and shots, with no emphasis being given by Scorsese. It could be interpreted as Scorsese wanting to maintain the sense of verisimilitude he has so far established, and that this is just a random, boring occurrence which happens every morning.

Scorsese then presents us with close ups of the specific parts of the young man’s face which he is shaving, for instance his cheeks or his chin. There are also cutaways to the young man putting the razor underneath the tap to clean it off. This is done with emphasis, as it is also edited in time with Berigan’s music. Scorsese, possibly, is attempting to draw us into what he is doing, and possibly give us a clue as to the consequence of his actions.

We then cut to an extreme close up of the young man looking into a mirror. Only the top half of his face is seen. We can see that he is moving about and possibly touching his face, but we do not know why. We then see he is applying more shaving cream. The desired effect here may be to create confusion – we cannot comprehend why anyone would want to shave straight after they just have done. This starts becoming more and more confusing and surreal and the music itself, by just being included in the film becomes more and more unnerving.

We are then presented with more close ups of the specific parts of his face that he is shaving. When he reaches his moustache, the camera pulls back and we see a very thick and long line of blood on the right side of his face, underneath his ear. By Scorsese employing this “big reveal,” he may be trying to set the wheels in motion and imply that the big shave of the title is about to be seen.
We are then presented with a close up of the young man's face in profile followed by a pull back which reveals more bloody nicks and cuts. His face appears almost to be overcome with these cuts, and that the red of the blood is slowly replacing the white of the shaving foam. It would seem, perhaps, that Scorsese is trying to convey the idea of purity verses violence, a theme prevalent throughout his entire body of work.

The idea of purity versus violence is emphasised by continuous cutaways to the sink over which the young man stands. The pristine white of the sink is slowly beset with a flood of scarlet red blood. This unnerves us. The viewers cannot understand why he is doing this to himself. The violence, the infliction of pain upon himself is mindless and senseless. We cannot, as viewers, possibly comprehend why he is doing this to himself, but maybe it is in the meaninglessness and the pointlessness of the violence where the meaning and the point of what Scorsese is presenting to us can be located.

With the onslaught of violence and self-harm seen throughout the course of the film, it could be argued that Scorsese, by building verisimilitude, through the bland, boring, pristine white bathroom and the young man seemingly going about his daily routine is, as the film goes on, and as more blood is spilt, he seeks to destroy it. Perhaps Scorsese wished to blindside us - we could not expect this to happen, and so when it does, it is all the more shocking.

The film ends with the young man running the blade of the razor against the neck, essentially slitting his throat. This happens at a point where both the music and the violence on screen reaches its' crescendo. Scorsese could have used the music for a number of reasons: firstly, as a framing device - the film starts and ends exactly when the song does, and so the events seen in the film, the way they are edited, and the way they are presented, are almost constructed using the song as a guideline; secondly, as a way of establishing black humour. The nature of the song, verses the nature of what is seen on screen, reinforce each other in such a way that it, rather than making us enjoy the piece, it makes us recoil in disgust, and the song could have been used by Scorsese to make the impact of the piece all the more shocking.

The film, which has no plot to speak of, is surreal in its narrative, due to the events seen on screen, but not surreal in the sense where the events seen are over exaggerated. Scorsese employs camera shots and editing techniques which, while being to the point and matter of fact, also give us humour, humour in the darkness of what it seen on screen.

The film left me feeling raw, bitter, confused and shocked. It felt almost as if the violence was shown just because Scorsese wanted to experiment and create “the bloodbath to end all bloodbaths.” However, the more I read into the making of the film, and the circumstances and context of the Vietnam War which surrounded it, the more it seemed that, when taken as an anti-war film, The Big Shave is very well constructed and extremely effective, and, perhaps, a perfect example of how we as humans are capable of complete destruction, to ourselves, most of all, for no other reason other than we have the power to do so.