Pristine white tiles, glistening bathroom fittings, close-ups of the purest of water droplets around a silver plug. Shaving equipment in a mirrored cabinet. A young man enters the room, hair coiffed and jaw chiselled, and peels off his white Marlon Brando t-shirt to a cacophony of appraising glances, cuts and zooms. He picks up his razor and begins to shave. And shave. And shave.

Gore, discomfort and the very medium of film itself are pushed to their limits…

Stubble becomes smooth becomes skin becomes flesh becomes blood as he continues unperturbed and our hearts quicken, not from lust this time but for horror. Blood pools, disturbing the purity of the white ceramic as it runs from his throat. THE BIG SHAVE, indeed. Gore, discomfort and the very medium of film itself are pushed to their limits in this experimental triumph, a short made by Martin Scorsese while still in art school.

Set to a soft jazz soundtrack from Bunny Berigan, which renders the situation flippant, not quite mundane but almost comic, THE BIG SHAVE’s deadpan atmosphere cuts deep through the skin of a society labouring the self-appointed task of keeping up appearances. Scorsese’s criticality is razor sharp, whether applied to the formal aestheticism of the cinematic gestures he employs, or to the wider political issues which aggrieve him.

… disturbingly compelling exhibition of the self-mutilation of youthful beauty …

Also known as VIET 67, the film critiques, in its disturbingly compelling exhibition of the self-mutilation of youthful beauty, the pointlessness of the lost lives of young American men sent to their deaths in the Vietnam War. THE BIG SHAVE is longer than its 6 minutes, points to futile years and to lifetimes, to self-destruction and to loss. The horror in this short movie is more unnerving than the instinctive squeamishness it provokes, but inflicts pain in no way equitable to the inference of mass violence it contains.

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