September
13, 1985, release date
Directed
by Martin Scorsese
Screenplay
by Joseph Minion and Martin Scorsese (uncredited)
Music by
Howard Shore
Edited by
Thelma Schoonmaker
Cinematography
by Michael Ballhaus
Griffin Dunne as Paul Hackett
Teri Garr as Julie
John Heard as Tom Schorr
Catherine O’Hara as Gail
Linda Fiorentino as Kiki Bridges
Verna Bloom as June
Tommy Chong as Pepe
Cheech Marin as Neil
Will Patton as Horst
Clarence Felder as Club Berlin
bouncer
Dick Miller as Pete, waiter at the diner
Bronson Pinchot as Lloyd
Martin Scorsese as Club Berlin
searchlight operator
Victor Argo as diner cashier
Larry Block as taxi driver
Rocco Sisto as coffee shop cashier
Produced
by The Geffen Company and Double Play Productions
Distributed
by Warner Bros.
After Hours
was released thirty years ago today. I decided to celebrate this anniversary by
taking another look at the film and seeing if it would work as neo-noir. I
think After Hours is laugh-out-loud
funny, but I do believe there is room for comedy in noir. After Hours is a good example of a neo-noir that can be very funny.
The story line is linear, told from Paul Hackett’s
point of view, and that is the only way the audience knows that everything is connected.
But the linear plot doesn’t detract from the absurdity of Paul’s situation. I
learned from the DVD that the entire film, including the indoor scenes, was
shot at night to keep the right mood throughout, and it works. Ambient lighting
was used when possible. One example is Paul’s cab ride downtown, where the
diegetic light adds to the realistic mood. Tracking shots leading to close-ups
on Paul are used frequently. They create the feeling that he is alone in his
predicament; later in the film, after the vigilante mob forms, such shots
emphasize that he is a hunted man.
The entire plot hinges on fate and coincidence. Paul
is lonely and wants companionship, which is why he is so eager to travel to
Soho and meet Marcy again. The minute that Paul’s twenty dollar bill flies out
of the cab window on his way to Soho, he is in the hands of fate. Even the
ending is the result of fate. At one point in his
desperate run through Soho, Paul gets to his knees in the middle of the street
and addresses fate directly: “What do you want from me? What have I done? I’m
just a word processor . . . !” But I don’t think fate can be described as evil
in After Hours; it’s simply
indifferent to Paul and his predicament.
The bouncer at Club Berlin in
Soho is wearing a Checkpoint Charlie T-shirt: Checkpoint Charlie is the name
given by the Western Allies in World War II to a crossing point in the Berlin
Wall between East and West Berlin during the Cold War. Many classic films noir
are postwar films that show characters trying to cope with the absurdity of
their wartime experiences, and in 1985, After
Hours reaches back and connects with that period. I saw this
on Wikipedia: The dialogue between Paul and the
bouncer at Club Berlin was inspired by Kafka’s Before the Law, one of the short stories included in his novel The Trial. According to Scorsese, the
short story reflected his experience of having to
wait to get one of his film projects (The
Last Temptation of Christ) completed, which didn’t happen until two years
after the completion of After Hours.
But it’s not necessary to know this or to be familiar with World War II and
Cold War trivia before seeing After
Hours. It is clear that the film is about the absurdity of Paul’s situation
and his desperate attempts to get home.
On the DVD, Martin Scorsese describes Paul Hackett as
a character who is guilt-ridden for no reason.
Paul has plenty of reason to be angst-ridden. Scorsese mentions mythology as
way to describe Paul: He is a character about to descend into Hades. Fate
(chance, coincidence—whatever you call it) is what drives the plot and Paul’s
desperation. But Paul isn’t completely sympathetic: He snoops through Marcy’s purse and finds medication to
treat second-degree burns, and he plays the voyeur when he removes the sheet
from her body and examines it.
Almost all the women could be called a femme fatale in
this film. They eventually turn on him or leave him in situations that he has
trouble coping with or getting out of. Julie wants to get back at Paul, so she
posts drawings of him around the neighborhood to make it easier for the vigilante
mob to find him. Gail repeatedly prevents Paul from phoning a friend by
confusing him when he tries to dial a phone number from memory. The minute she
sees one of Julie’s posters, she literally blows the whistle on him. Gail might
be the best example of a femme fatale because she uses her Mister Softee truck
to lead a vigilante mob looking for Paul.
Paul is suspected of being
the neighborhood serial burglar in Soho. Residents recognize him as a stranger
who’s been hanging out in the neighborhood. They form a vigilante mob to hunt
him down. When they break into Club Berlin to look for Paul, they come
downstairs into June’s apartment to investigate, and they mean harm: One of
them beats June’s pillows with a baseball bat. But this isn’t the only violence
in After Hours; the following examples
are discussed or shown in the film:
• Rape.
• Suicide.
• Serial burglaries in
Soho.
• Murder in an apartment
across an alley from where Paul is hiding.
• Paul is hunted by the
vigilante mob in Soho.
• The vigilante mob murders
a suspect in the burglaries.
Crime, especially murder, is a hallmark of noir, and
the plot of After Hours includes crime
and violence.
Near the end of After Hours, the burglars Neil and Pepe break into June’s basement apartment
by removing a manhole cover. (I think that this could be interpreted to mean
that Paul has indeed reached Hades.) Neil wants the Paul/sculpture:
• Pepe: “Hey, man, is it worth
taking this thing?”
• Neil: “What? Are you crazy, man?
This is art.”
• Pepe: “Art sure is ugly, man.”
• Neil: “Yeah, that’s how much you
know, man, you know? The uglier the art, the more it’s worth.”
• Pepe: “This thing must be worth a
fortune, man.”
• Neil: “That’s right.”
According to Neil: A stereo is a
stereo (even more true now in 2015!), but art is forever.
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