After Hours - 1985 - DVD

Friday, September 22, 2006

After Hours is Scorsese on cocaine. It moves fast, it's a delirium, but is one of Martin Scorsese's finest. According to the commentary track the film wasn't supposed to be. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) was in production and suddenly halted. Why? Not sure. But the script by Joe Minion was given to him by Amy Robinson, who also appeared in one of Scorsese's earlier films, Mean Streets (1973), and with the feeling that his directing career was crumbling before his eyes, he gave After Hours a shot. There was urgency to this piece of work because Scorsese had to prove to himself (and the studios) that he could produce good film amidst the disaster that Last Temptation was turning out to be. He had to prove he was a Director.

The film is edginess in the dark, and was shot entirely at night including interior scenes. Griffin Dunne who plays Paul Hackett, the sleepless lead character who is unwillingly sucked into the black hole of the SoHo after hours, says that the film would begin shooting as the sun went down, and for the next 6 or so weeks he and the crew slept in the day and awoke to the world at permanent midnight. The opening shot takes place in an office lined with cubicles and filled with what appears to be sunlight, but that light is artificial, too. The camera sweeps across the room to Paul, and in the moment we meet him there is tension in the room that pounds its way into the next sequence, completed with Scorsese's signature seamlessness, but faster. He measures our breaths with the camera's punching movements, and in Paul's sudden and awkward circumstances you exhale in a puff of laughter. How could he manage to lose the keys to his apartment to the owner of a bar who is married to the woman who just committed suicide after her failed date with he himself? It happens quickly before your eyes as if it were one long shot, full of exhaustion, and full of grace.