SCORSESE’S “AFTER HOURS”—WHAT NEW YORK WAS LIKE THIRTY YEARS AGO. Kids, this week is the 30th anniversary of the release of a movie which seemed at the time an uncanny portrayal of what it felt like to live in New York City. The movie is “After Hours” by Martin Scorsesee, and I know that it’s been 30 years because of this review by Glenn Kenny. (SPOILER ALERT—Kenny’s review reveals a lot about the movie.) Kenny points out that the movie is now being streamed on Amazon video in honor of the anniversary.
“After Hours” is a comedy about what happens to a young man who lives uptown and finds himself in Soho at night—a Soho that only 30 years ago was almost deserted at night. The young man encounters a number of strange people (somebody at the time commented that Cheech and Chong, playing versions of themselves, were the most normal people in the movie).
Kenny concludes his review by saying: “The nightmare vision of After Hours is still bracingly tough, some might even say problematic. But it depicts a milieu that, it has to be said, WAS New York.”
Kids, I agree. I have never seen a movie that evoked my experiences of a place and time so vividly. This was part of the New York I experienced in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. (Mary Jane simply commented just now that she still remembers how the movie creeped her out.)