What's a Nice Girl like You Doing in a Place like This?

Plot

A writer named Algernon moves into a new apartment and buys a picture of a boat on a lake from a persuasive salesman, though he dislikes it. His friends find it unimpressive. Algernon soon fixates on the image, struggling to write, eat, and sleep, believing his obsession stems from his intense sensitivity. He throws a party and meets a girl who distracts him, restoring his ability to function. He marries her, and they honeymoon at the 1964 New York World's Fair, still under construction. Afterward, Algernon writes a book of confessions while his wife paints. Following a conversation with a psychoanalyst about his obsession, Algernon becomes fixated on another picture, an ocean, and feels trapped inside it.

Themes

Martin Scorsese said the film was inspired by an Algernon Blackwood short story, Mel Brooks's 1963 short animated film The Critic, and French-Italian New Wave cinema, and he created it after watching Federico Fellini's 8½. The story depicts Algernon searching for his identity, a theme Scorsese would explore in later works. Catholic guilt appears when Algernon writes a book of confessions. Annette Wernblad noted Algernon's ego was in 'grip of deadly fear' and compared him to Norman Bates.

Ben Nyce described it as a light-hearted treatment of self-destructive behavior. Lester Keyser said Scorsese's 'yearning for sex' leads to this film and later ones. L. Grist observed that Algernon's paralyzing obsession makes him alienating, and his relationship with the man in the picture renders the photograph a metaphoric mirror. Grist also noted technical circumscriptions like repeated locations, minimal dress, and montages of stills.

The typewriter scene was replicated from Shoot the Piano Player. Grist said the man in the picture is Scorsese, and Algernon becomes a substitute for him. The analyst says Algernon 'only half existed to begin with'.

Production

Scorsese intended to become a priest but failed out of seminary and joined New York University's Washington Square College, where he met professor Haig P. Manoogian. In 1963, Scorsese wrote and directed this short film as part of NYU's summer program, backed by the Edward L. Kingsley Foundation, the Screen Producers Guild, and the Brown University Film Festival, with Manoogian producing. The film features music by Richard H. Coll, cinematography by James Newman, and editing by Robert Hunsicker, and includes animation, montage, jump cuts, associative editing, and freeze-frame shots.

Manoogian motivated Scorsese to write an original script. Though initially intended as horror, it evolved into a comedy. A student cut the negative incorrectly, so a professor asked Thelma Schoonmaker, also in the summer program, to help Scorsese. Schoonmaker later worked on Who's That Knocking at My Door and won an Academy Award for Raging Bull.

Scorsese described the film as having 'all the tricks' and being 'a tale of pure paranoia.' The film is nine minutes long; the May 2020 re-release lasts ten minutes, two seconds.

Release, reception and legacy

The film was released in 1992 on the Scorsese x4 VHS compilation tape in the United Kingdom, and on 26 May 2020, it was released in Blu-ray digital format by The Criterion Collection. Critics complimented the director's work, with one citing 'early genius' and the Austin Film Society noting the assurance and gifts of its young writer-director. Vincent LoBrutto felt the title was a cliché. Annette Wernblad claimed it is simultaneously absurdly humorous and deeply disturbing.

Scott Meslow of Mental Floss called it briskly paced. Peter Galvin of Special Broadcasting Service believed it was one inspiration for Goodfellas. Aaron Baker described it as a hybrid work combining Hollywood and vaudeville with a New Wave sensibility. The film, along with Scorsese's It's Not Just You, Murray!, was honored at the 1965 National Student Film Festival.

Jim Sangster said it connects to most of Scorsese's later films. Scorsese reexamined a man trapped inside a picture in the 1990 film Dreams. Christopher Campbell of Business Insider noted it as Scorsese's earliest use of a first-person narrator, comparing it to The Wolf of Wall Street. Slant Magazine noted the painting of an old man in a boat amusingly anticipates a painting in Goodfellas.