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The Big Shave
A spotless white bathroom quickly turns blood-stained in Martin Scorsese’s daring student film. A sleepy man walks into a bathroom, lathers his face with shaving cream, and starts trimming. He then applies more shaving cream and starts a second shave. Although this time his body, the sink, the razor, and the floor are incrementally covered in blood, he continues unperturbed until the whole screen colours red.
Because the credits include the text “Viet '67”, the short film is considered an allegory for the Vietnam War, the main character’s self-mutilation serving as a metaphor for the self-destructive American involvement in the war.
The Big Shave premiered in 1968 at the Festival of Experimental Cinema in Knokke, Belgium, and won the Prix de l’Âge d’Or.
Bio Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese (1942) is one of the most important figures of the New Hollywood era and has received, among other things, an Academy Award, four BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, and three Golden Globe Awards. Scorsese won the Palme d’Or in Cannes with Taxi Driver (1976). Like the latter, four of his other films were added to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant”: Mean Streets (1973), The Last Waltz (1978), Raging Bull (1980), and Goodfellas (1990).
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- This film was #78 in the “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025