Possibly the only real noir comedy that incorporates all the great elements of both genres, this film has a place in the book for great hybrid films.

If ever there was a darker surreal comedy of manners, After Hours tops it for crystallizing that pure New York experience of just trying to go home.

It is the classic need for us to find where we belong that serves a ground for the plot of this screwball fish-out-of-water story. As with much humor you either get it, or you don't, and I laugh at it more each time I watch it.

Released in 1985, it won Best Picture at the 1985 Independent Spirit Award and Best Director award for Martin Scorsese. Scorsese also won the 1986 Cannes Film Festival for Best Director for the film.

Martin Scorsese's story, centers on Paul Hackett, a hapless word processor who thinks he's hit the luckiest night of his life when a young attractive woman gives him her phone number in a Diner. The film with all its over-the-top situations is shocking to milquetoast Paul who has ventured into the unknown searching for love and friendship.

The newly released widescreen DVD with added features of commentary by Scorsese, Griffin Dunn, producer Amy Robinson, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, and cinematographer Michael Ballhaus has a great look and sound.

The commentary is a focused tract that accompanies a portion of scenes from the film giving information on the importance of them. The disc also includes deleted scenes, many of which are kernels of comic moments.

Also on the disc is "Filming For Your Life: Making After Hours", an informative and insightful look at how Joseph Minion's script was discovered and optioned and how the producers put the whole thing together with a wheelbarrow full of good fortune.

It is a look at Scorsese and his most facile way of telling a story with pictures, and great pacing, and his excellent way of getting perfect perfs from his actors.

Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) a lonely computer consultant from uptown Manhattan meets Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) in a Diner and she tells him about her friend Kiki Bridges, a SoHo artist who makes 'bagel and cream cheese paper weights'. When Paul expresses interest she gives him her phone number and he calls later, at which time Marcy tells Paul she has had an argument with a 'friend' and asks Paul to come over. Although the hour is a little late for a work night, Paul grabs $20, hails a taxi and heads out from his East Side apartment to SoHo. Paul loses his money when his $20 flies out of the window during the high-speed cab ride. At Marcy's loft Kiki (Linda Fiorentino), is involved in a tedious plaster-of-Paris three-dimensional rendering of what Paul appears to be Edvard Munk's "The Scream", upon which time Kiki enlists him to do the work for her. When Marcy comes in from a trip to the all-night drug store for some medication, it seems that the mood of the date is strained considering the lack of common interests that Marcy and Paul share. When Paul give up and leave in a huff, he finds that the subway fare has gone up that night and he search for some place to get out of the rain and decide what to do. He runs into a late-night bar where he meets waitress Julie (Teri Garr) and bartender Tom (John Heard) who offers to lend him the money to get home but can't open his cash register and asks Paul to go to his apartment and get the keys to the cash register for him. As is heading back to the bar he sees Pepe (Tommy Chong) and Neil (Cheech Marin) coming out of Mary's loft with Kiki's sculpture and tells them to stop. When they drop the sculpture and run away Paul carries it back up to the loft where he finds that Marcy has taken it hard that he walked out on her earlier. When Paul returns to the bar Tom tells him that he has to lock the bar because his girlfriend has taken some pills which prompts Paul to reach out to Julie feeling she may do something extreme as he has walked out on her as well. The action gets even crazier when Paul seeks for Kiki and her boyfriend in a bar for Mohawk-wearing patrons, and he is mistaken for a burglar who has been stealing from all the local apartments. A group of 'vigilantes' led by Gail (Catherine O'Hara) driving a Mr. Softee Ice Cream truck chase him through lower Manhattan. Paul meets June in another 'after-hours' bar and they hit it off, but when the posse catches up with Paul, June hides in a plaster-of-Paris sculpture, eluding his captors but also prompting Pepe and Neil to steal him thinking he is a valuable work of art. The nightmarish evening ends in an ironic, and mundane fashion as Paul finally returns to his East Side neighborhood.

Paramount cancelled "The Last Temptation of Christ" just before the film was to begin principle photography. Scorsese was looking for a project in order to work but also feeling bruised by the film industry wanted to make a film he felt good about.

According to Griffin Dunn and Amy Robinson on the feature documentary Scorsese became emotionally attached to After Hours bringing to the making of the film a strong affinity for his protagonist.

Displaying the Scorsese noir sensibility and his masterful style, After Hours and its protagonist Paul Hackett stand as a metaphoric statement for the Director's own struggle in the film industry.

On the commentary tract Scorsese states that he was wondering about his place in the development of cinema and that he was looking to create a "satiric edge of a Hitchcock or Lang movie where a character is always doomed by fate".

Scorsese saw After Hours as a classic story from Greek mythology in that "the character is going into Hades, and not having the money to pay the boats man".

This may be a film that only a 'New Yorker' can really love for the dark humor. There are great moments that will illicit rueful laughter.

The cab ride Paul takes that is a whirlwind of a trip accompanied by Spanish tap-dancing music as Paul's money is whipped out of the window by the breeze coming in the window as the driver tears downtown toward SoHo.

The moment when Paul and Marcy bond in the Diner and she tells him about her ex-husband who had some obsession with the "The Wizard of Oz" and screamed certain lines from the film when they made love. Recalling the relationship she rants “... he just couldn't stop, he just couldn't stop, he just... couldn't ... stop. So I just broke the whole thing off!” This scene is further highlighted on the commentary tract with cinematographer Michael Ballhaus who talks about how Scorsese got the performance from Rosanna Arquette.

Fine little scenes make this film stand out. We identify with Paul in all his confrontations with the characters that inhabit the dark night of SoHo. For example the event that takes lace when Paul runs to the subway only to find that the fare has gone up and he is short on change. Murray Moston as the Token Booth Clerk plays a wonderfully droll by-the-book city employee who refuses to let Paul slide.

Take the scene when Paul runs into Mark (Robert Plunket) a self-deluding street pickup that says "I have never done this with a man before and I... I'm a little bit nervous". Paul only wants to go home, but his attempt to make contact with a sympathetic person is misunderstood as a sexual advance.

As Paul recaps the night and all the topsy-turvey events, we realize that he will never fit in this 'downtown' after hours world, because he doesn't understand the rules. Everything is different in the after- hours bars and restaurants.

I got my new re-mastered DVD through half.com for $8.95, and it goes great with Dominoes Pizza.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older