Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (released today on Criterion)

4 Responses to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (released today on Criterion)

1. Walter Biggins says:

   July 12, 2023 at 1:36 am

   Congrats, Sheila!!!

   Reply
   • sheila says:

     July 12, 2023 at 6:04 am

     thank you Walter!!

     Reply
2. Jessie says:

   July 28, 2023 at 11:41 pm

   When everything is important but nothing is understood, the world is a maddening place…..When she finally does appear, she’s different somehow….He doesn’t know that he is not in charge of the keys; they’re in charge of him.…the cacophony of objects and their fetishisation…yesss this is such a spot-on read of how disorienting the movie is and the way everyone and everything betrays their immediate presentation (the treachery of images?). Like the only thing that maintains in this movie is that little graffito of the shark eating a guy’s dick and the way that Scorsese just sits on that for a deadpan beat (soo funny, Dunn’s face!) before he/they have to move on to the next betrayal.

   I love all the connections you make here too, from the odyssey and the trial to marnie, and draw out its place in MS’s NYC oeuvre. Great read. Congrats!! Looking forward to the next one!

   Reply
   • sheila says:

     July 31, 2023 at 8:37 am

     Jessie – thank you!!

     // the way everyone and everything betrays their immediate presentation (the treachery of images?). //

     Yes! I love how you put this! He is fooled again and again – what is HIS immediate presentation? I think of the scene where he offers to give Kiki a massage – and … he’s so creepy – but that may just be my own personal experience with guys I called “Backrub Boys” – ever since college, when a guy in the theatre department was constantly offering to give girls backrubs – and … you just knew it was a stand-in for the other kind of contact none of us would give him – and so … there were strings attached to the backrub, and he couldn’t understand why other guys “got to touch us” – I mean, he never said this, but it was all in the VIBE of the backrub. Not an obvious quid pro quo – but there nonetheless. Backrub Boy is now a shorthand in my group of friends – it’s a TYPE. Paul is definitely a Backrub Boy – and … nobody is into it. Teri Garr projects onto him something that is not there – Rosanna Arquette is using him for her own mysterious purposes. Catherine O’Hara is out for blood – and he is fooled by her blonde glamour – aren’t they all?

     Oh God, the shark graffiti. I LOVE that camera move. and yes – Dunne’s face! he just stares at it. Blank. Nothing else needs to be said.

     Reply

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