• The opening and closing shots serve as bookends – Scorsese is flying around the office with his trademark active camera
  • A riff of “Alice” or Wizard of Oz (he’s trying to get home for most of the film), or the book of Job from the Bible—a Kafkaesque (certainly Welles version of The Trial comes to mind) journey that is simultaneously about nothing (there’s no plot outside of trying to get A) laid and B) home), but also about the 80’s yuppie, sin, masculinity and sexual repression
sin, masculinity and sexual repression
  • Notable for the Michael Ballhaus (another strong collaboration with Scorsese) and Scorsese – famous crane shot of the key floating towards the camera with the jump cuts—a melding of Hitchcock (say from Notorious with the crane shot) and Godardian jump cuts
  • Scorsese is active- closeups of the phone, it’s not Welles’ The Trial in mise-en-scene with the objects in the frame trapping his protagonist (Griffin Dunne)
  • Influential to many films including the 2017 film (which I frankly think is superior) Good Time from the Safdie brothers
  • incredibly rich subtext
the subtext has no end- edvard munch’s “The Scream”
  • Rosanna Arquette is intoxicating (I mean she inspired multiple rock songs in her honor for  a reason)
  • Richard Schickel TIME Magazine “The result is a delirious and challenging comedy, a postmodern Ulysses in Nighttown
  • The conversation between Dunne’s Paul at the Club Berlin is from Kafka
it’s not Welles’ The Trial and not on that level- but there are a few shots where the geography and mise-en-scene are set up as a labyrinth
  • Highly Recommend