Martin Scorsese's first feature film, an independent production, draws on Scorsese's own life to tell a story of teenagers in New York City's Little Italy. Harvey Keitel plays J.R., a jobless kid bouncing back and forth between the strict laws of his Catholic upbringing and the tough laws of the streets - and winding up spending most of his time lost somewhere between complete boredom and complete fantasy. J.R. hangs out with the guys and goes out with the “broads,” but intends to marry a “nice girl.” When he meets a girl on the Staten Island ferry, his plan is confounded. Unlike anyone he has ever known, she reads, lives alone, doesn't watch TV; moreover, she is a “nice girl” who offers herself to him. The issue of her virginity and a past rape brings out the violence and hypocrisy inherent in J.R.'s dual upbringing, and finally leaves him both without his previous conviction and without the girl. Scorsese's evocation of life in New York City is both personal and analytical; his observant sense of irony (his hero offering to “forgive” the girl for having been raped) matches his sense of humor (on a trip to the country, J.R. is strangely uncomfortable: all that fresh air and nature). The film was considered a fine “first film” by most critics - who compared it to Marty but chided Scorsese for his fragmentation of narrative and over-emphasis on milieu - but Andrew Sarris called Scorsese “stylistically influenced by the nouvelle vague...” and Time commented, “Scorsese choreographs his camera movements with an exhilarating, easy grace, and his dramatic use of rock'n'roll...surpasses similar efforts in The Graduate and Easy Rider.”