Together with Mean Streets, made a year later, Boxcar Bertha established director Martin Scorsese as a talent to watch.

Made five years after Arthur Penn's seminal Bonnie and Clyde, it inhabits the same territory - hit-and-run criminals in the desperate Depression era.

But the film is far more than a mere imitation: set on the railroads, it centres on a quartet who turn to crime - but within a bosses-versus-workers framework.

Bertha (Barbara Hershey) goes on the run after attacking the money-grabbing boss who caused the death of her father; and Big Bill (David Carradine), the rail worker who rescues her, is a union man trying to get a better deal out of the tightfisted railroad bosses (headed by John Carradine): the moral nub here is the moment when Bill offers his share of a train heist to the union.

Sharply scripted, very well acted by Hershey, Carradine and Barry Primus (as another member of the robber quartet) and stylishly shot, Scorsese's film is up there as a worthy companion to Bonnie and Clyde.