A new DVD set puts the spotlight on Martin Scorsese's past work, including Boxcar Bertha.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences voters debating whether Martin Scorsese's time has come to finally receive a Best Directing Oscar -- his lively Howard Hughes bio-drama The Aviator has him in contention this year -- and, perhaps, a Best Picture award for the film, can brush up on the veteran director's body of work via The Martin Scorsese Collection (MGM), the second multiple-DVD set of Scorsese's films to be released in the last six months.

Titles include the documentary The Last Waltz, about The Band's farewell concert and New York, New York, a period picture that pays homage to Vincent Minnelli big band musicals. The marquee picture in the collection is Raging Bull (1980), the bloody masterpiece about middleweight fighter Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro) that should have won Scorsese the directing Oscar he still covets.

If Academy voters are watching The Scorsese Collection before casting their ballots, what will they make of his sophomore directing effort, the 1972 drive-in movie Boxcar Bertha?

Set in 1930s Arkansas, innocent Bertha (Barbara Hershey) partners with union organizer Big Bill Shelly (David Carradine) and a couple of robbers on a crime spree as idealistic as she is: The stolen money is handed out to poor union workers. The film is a steady follow-up to the landmark period gangster drama Bonnie and Clyde and a rock-solid exploitation flick with a straightforward goal to entertain.

Barbara Hershey made Bertha a carefree spirit more in sync with 1972 hippie culture than Depression-era Arkansas, but that's part of the movie's fun. Lanky David Carradine (star of Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2) complements Hershey's grins and girlish voice with a serious demeanor.

The film's frequent shotgun blasts ring out like thunderclaps, often resulting in splatters of red paint (blood). The vibrant color and camerawork is impressive in Boxcar Bertha, a film too artful for its drive-in tag. But there's no need to discuss Scorsese's trademarked editing except to lament its absence from a by-the-numbers script with a shoot-out or sex scene every 15 minutes. (Joyce and John William Corrington were the screenwriters.)

The story goes that Scorsese showed Boxcar Bertha to his idol, independent filmmaker John Cassavetes, and afterwards Cassavetes promptly told him, "Good work. Now don't ever do it again" -- meaning don't waste your skills on films other than your own.

Scorsese went and made Mean Streets, but the comparison is not between his 1973 Little Italy street thug drama and Boxcar, but between Boxcar and the sprawling entertainments he's making today.

Lately, Scorsese makes epics like Gangs of New York and The Aviator, and the fear is that he has dissolved into an establishment Hollywood director, not very different from a middlebrow workhorse like William Wyler (Ben-Hur).

There are faults and flaws to The Aviator, but the energy of the film carries it. The same thing can be said about Boxcar Bertha, a film whose sole purpose is to entertain. Yet, while The Aviator is smothered in celebrity gloss and elaborate production details, Boxcar Bertha recalls a time when a movie could be shot and finished in a whirlwind of creativity.

Granted, Scorsese did not make his artistic mark with Boxcar Bertha, but the film still holds up and hints at the future entertainer inside Scorsese, a one-time maverick who has grown comfortable with popcorn pictures and broad storytelling. Boxcar Bertha is clearly not Scorsese's masterpiece, but his '70s drive-in movie could be the most relaxed and self-confident film he's ever made.

The Academy has slighted Scorsese in the past, and any Oscar is considered the equivalent of a semi-lifetime achievement award, which means recognition for all his films -- including the frequently forgotten Boxcar Bertha. ©