Martin Scorsese's First Star

His Name Was Peter Bernuth

In 1967, a young film student named Martin Scorsese made The Big Shave, a six-minute short, in which a young man shaves his face, and then mutilates it. The film, otherwise known as Viet ‘67, was meant as a statement on the Vietnam War. Would we still watch it, would it still be shown in film classes if it had been the work of another filmmaker? Maybe, but everyone I know who has seen it has admired it, and any number of young filmmakers have paid homage to it in their introductory class projects.

The sharp, violent editing has something in common with Raging Bull, as well as the repetitions in Taxi Driver. The style is Scorsese, but the mood is Kubrickian. Peter Bernuth, the film’s star, has nothing like Robert De Niro’s eerie humor, or his psychopathic rage. If anything, he recalls Keir Dullea’s alienated visage in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Bernuth did not fit the demographic of the fallen U.S. soldier. He grew up in a prosperous family on Long Island and graduated from Princeton. Later, in the 1970s, he served in Ed Koch’s Congressional office and ran his campaign, but he left politics for the family business, a chemical import and distribution company. He later moved the company to Florida, as he believed it a more ideal place to raise his family. And he died in 1994 at the age of 53, leaving behind a wife and three sons. (All information courtesy of Bernuth’s obituary in The Miami Herald, which makes no mention of The Big Shave.)

Some actors are meant for just one role. Bernuth found his at a young age. He’s now immortalized in a film that apparently has very little to do with the kind of adult he became. The great distance between the actor’s role and the actor’s biography fascinates. And though jarring, Scorsese made perfect use of a WASP Ivy Leaguer, successful in politics, business, and family.