AFTER HOURS: 4K UHD Blu-ray (The Geffen Company, 1985) Criterion

Martin Scorsese’s grotesquely amusing take on the experiential distress of the average ‘urbanite’ Joe – rechristened Paul Hackett, and played with sweetly challenged surrender by the briefly accessible arthouse fav,’ Griffin Dunne in After Hours (1985) ranks among a dwindling sect of subgenre screwball noirs into which a seemingly innocuous fop finds himself the unwitting victim in a dystopian society gone slightly silly, if not, in fact, thoroughly mad. In ’85, After Hours hit movie screens like a chimpanzee hurling its own feces onto that creative canvas, landing with a $10 million thud at the box office and quickly to disappear altogether from pop culture for nearly a decade thereafter. In more recent time, the pic has enjoyed its justly deserved cult renaissance. Rather unnervingly, it plays with more than a kernel of truth for today’s post-modernist fallout, virtually unnoticed in the heady, spend/spend hoopla of the eighties. Much about the movie has, alas, and regrettably, dated. It truly is a product of its time. Dunne’s dummy endures the rigors of one emasculating femme fatale after another; Rosanna Arquette’s bookish, Marcy Franklin, who lures Paul to the lair of Linda Fiorentino’s papier-mâché artiste, Kiki Bridges, and then, Katharine O’Hara as the slightly psychotic, Gail, and Terri Garr as possessive and needy, Julie.

After Hours is a yuppie’s perverse, tongue-in-cheek nightmare to expose the operational hierarchy of big city society by day as mere masquerade for its darkly purposed, weirdly disturbing and self-destructive array of creatures who crawl up from its cesspools under the cover of night. Our nebbish hero, a mere cog or byproduct in this brightly lit, but bitterly boring concrete and steel cityscape, is entirely out of his element when attempting to slum it in the ‘after hours’ netherworld. And thus, mayhem ensues as desperate survival replaces Paul’s quest for out-of-the-ordinary excitement. Perhaps, Paul’s weariness to resist temptation and chuck it all was semi-biographical for its director; Scorsese - still reeling from the smite of Paramount backing out of his big plans for The Last Temptation of Christ, eventually made at Universal in 1988. In the interim, Scorsese, eager to work on smaller projects, was put onto Double Play – the indie film company cofounded by Dunne and Amy Robinson, aspiring to launch with an unusual property, One Night in Soho, based on a screenplay from 26-year-old, Joe Minion.  With Scorsese’s modifications, After Hours was born. Embarking on his shoot, Scorsese was well-aware he did not have a viable ending for his movie. Several were written and filmed, but none seemed to satisfy. At this juncture, renown British director, Michael Powell, then dating Scorsese’s editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, offered his two cents’ worth - suggesting Paul must end up right back where he started. Reluctantly, Scorsese took Powell’s advice, pleasantly surprised when the ‘rough cut’ assembly with this new ending fulfilled the narrative arc of his misshapen tale. As for Powell and Schoonmaker – the couple would wed shortly thereafter.

Plot wise: computer data entry grunt, Paul Hackett is morbidly bored with his life. Desiring some spark of originality, and, also, to admire a fellow patron’s taste in literature (she’s reading Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer), Paul engages in a pleasant enough conversation with Marcy Franklin at an ‘after hours’ café. She tells him she lives in a Soho loft with gifted sculptor, Kiki Bridges, who makes and sells plaster-of-Paris paperweights resembling cream cheese bagels. Marcy also leaves Paul her phone number. Not long thereafter, Paul calls Marcy on the pretext of buying a paperweight. He then takes a taxi to her loft. But the cabbie’s (Larry Block) erratic driving causes Paul’s $20 bucks to fly out the open window. Disgruntled, and disbelieving of Paul’s excuse, the cabbie ditches Paul in the middle of a disreputable neighborhood. Paul finds his way to the loft, only to discover Kiki alone and in the middle of her latest sculpture - a cowering man, vaguely reminiscent of Edvard Munch's The Scream. While waiting for Marcy’s return, Paul unearths evidence Marcy has been disfigured. This, and Marcy’s bizarre behavior upon her arrival home cause Paul to become spooked over his initial desire to get to know her better.

Alas, Paul is stranded in Soho. His attempt to jump the subway turn-style is thwarted by a cop (John P. Codiglia). Instead, Paul meets Julie at another ‘low-class’ watering hole, presided over by bartender, Tom Schorr (John Heard). Believing Paul’s story thus far, Tom offers to give Paul enough money for the subway fare but is unable to open the register, having forgotten its key at his nearby apartment. Unable to leave his place of employ, Tom eventually agrees to allow Paul to go there in his stead to retrieve the key and bring it back to the bar. Too bad, Paul is spotted by Tom’s neighbors who suspect him of a string of robberies in their neighborhood. The real robbers, Neil (Richard Cheech Marin) and Pepe (Thomas Chong) are, in fact, very close by and in possession of Kiki’s screaming man sculpture, stolen from the loft. In confronting the pair, Paul manages to take back the sculpture.

Returning to the loft, Paul is informed by Kiki that Marcy was deeply troubled by the way things ended between them. Kiki encourages Paul to apologize to her roomie. But when Paul enters Marcy’s bedroom, he quickly discovers she has committed suicide. Tracing Kiki and her biker beau, Horst (Will Patton) to the seedy Club Berlin – but denied access by its bouncer – Paul instead reports Marcy’s death to the police by phone before hurrying back to the bar to give Tom his keys. Again, bad timing intervenes. Tom has locked up for a half-hour with no reason given for his departure. Now, Paul gets invited by Julie to her apartment across the street to wait for Tom’s return. Julie begins to sketch Paul’s portrait. Ultimately, Paul rejects her flirtations. Instead, he makes another attempt to enter Club Berlin, this time accosted by punks desiring to shave his hair into a mohawk.

Narrowly escaping with his locks intact, Paul meets Gail, an ice cream truck driver who mistakes him for the Soho burglar and incites a flashlight-toting mob to hunt Paul down to exact their revenge for the robberies. Paul realizes Julie’s likeness of him is being used on ‘wanted’ posters all over the neighborhood and seeks refuge back at Club Berlin where he finds the crowds have gone – all but June (Verna Bloom) who he asks to dance. Also, a sculptor, June gets the inspired idea to conceal Paul inside her papier-mâché creation but then refuses to liberate him from its hardened structure. Neil and Pepe steal Paul, but wind up dropping him from the back of their van. His outer plaster shell shatters and Paul, covered in dust, is nevertheless set free, only to realize he is directly in front of the building where he works by day, thereby assuring the cyclical nature of his original boredom with life will ultimately return. That Paul Hackett can only find a home in the painful reticence of learning to live with disappointment is perhaps Scorsese’s way of suggesting that raw, uninhibited irony, tinged in a modicum of sheer lunacy, is maybe – just maybe – a whole lot better than getting by with a safety net.

To imply Martin Scorsese’s reputation as a bankable film maker was on the line in 1985 is a bit much. Truth enough, 1977’s New York, New York, and, 1982’s The King of Comedy had done much to infer Scorsese was not infallible, even when afforded a sizable budget, and, in fact, might have an Achilles Heel, injurious to generating more tangibly mainstream hits. Certainly, Paramount’s lack of faith in financing his passion project, The Last Temptation of Christ must have additionally fostered the myth Scorsese’s days as a cinematic storyteller were fast coming to an end, if nowhere else, then in the trades. In retrospect, After Hours is so right a project for Scorsese to prove his critics wrong; set in New York, a city revered by its director, and done on a small scale to hark back to his early works on a shoestring, fresh out of film school: Whose That Knocking at My Door (1967), Mean Streets (1973). That After Hours was also a flop, though an interesting one at that, did little to add to these ripples of doubt. Indeed, viewed from a safe vantage, Paul’s lurid overnight peregrination lends a whiff of authenticity to Scorsese own mounting suspicion that, perhaps, the critics might be right. We can forgive Scorsese such shortsightedness when self-assessing his talent. All truly great artists are inherently bad at doing that. Scorsese remains, if not the definitive director of his generation, then irrefutably in the top 5, and in the top 10 of all-time greats, as well as the foremost proponent in preserving classic Hollywood, devout in his verve to keep the past, ever-present for future generations to study and admire.

After Hours arrives in 4K UHD and standard Blu-ray via Criterion’s alliance with Warner Home Video, the custodians of this title originally distributed by The Geffen Company. Comparatively, the 4K and standard Blu (also sourced from the same 4K files) are similarly represented in terms of visual quality. Indeed, on screens smaller than 65 inches, the noted differences between UHD and just hi-def are negligible at best. Where the UHD advances significantly is in projection. Here, we can see the subtler nuances and greater refinements in Michael Ballhaus’ cinematography. Black crush, present on the defunct DVD from 2004 is virtually a non-issue, along with age-related artifacts, while contrast, looking a tad anemic on the DVD is gorgeously represent on both standard and ultra hi-def. Interestingly, the early scene featuring Dunne’s Paul virtually ignoring the pipedreams of his coworker (portrayed by an, as-yet undiscovered Bronson Pinchot) still appear slightly wan in color fidelity and saturation levels. Perhaps this was Ballhaus’ way of visually suggesting the drab colorlessness of Paul Hackett’s life. Whatever the reason, the image for the first few moments is pretty dull, flat and uninspiring, but snaps together the moment Paul leaves sanity and his nine-to-five behind. Criterion offers us only an LPCM mono track (the picture was only released in mono theatrically). It’s adequate, though just.

Ported over from 2004, a commentary stitched from separate reflections made by Scorsese, Dunne, producer, Amy Robinson, Ballhaus, and editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, with newly recorded inserts from 2023 in which Robinson and Dunne wax about the picture’s longevity.  There’s also a making-of from 2004 that covers a lot of the same territory but also has interesting insights to reveal. Eight-minutes of thoroughly disposable ‘deleted’ content follows. But the best extra here is a newly recorded interview featuring Scorsese waxing affectionately with Fran Leibowitz. Scorsese, aged but still very much vital and keen, has lots to say and says it well indeed. Also new – a featurette about costume designer, Rita Ryack contributions. Criterion rounds out the goodies with a foldout booklet with an essay by Sheila O’Malley. Bottom line: while not all of After Hours has aged well – indeed, much of it has not – Scorsese’s fascination with a man on the edge of his own ennui, willing to risk mediocrity for a chance to feel alive again, still speaks to the intrepid/fearful passions we all share in, believing somehow the lives we endure are not necessarily the ones we were born to live. Criterion’s 4K release is reference quality and with some nicely assembled goodies to boot. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

4K – 5+

Blu-ray – 5

EXTRAS

4