New York, 2 hours of the morning

New York, two hours of the morning ( Fear City ) is a American Film of Abel Ferrara carried out in 1984.

Synopsis

Matt is a former boxer reconverted into the strip tease. It is associated with his friend Nicky in a company which feeds the clubs as strippers. The two men share the market with Goldstein. Matta hung up again because it killed one of its adversaries. This death haunts it so much so that it is re-examined unceasingly dreams some completing its adversary on the boxing ring. This memory also rotted its love life and led it to break with superb Loretta which is one of its employees. At this point in time a man starts to attack the young women when they leave the clubs. The fear goes up quickly. The girls refuse to work. The police force is impotent. Matt Nicky and Goldstein make an agreement to protect the girls who appears ineffective him too. Bound to the Maffia, Nick and Matt hesitate to call upon the protection of Dyes with carmine, a godfather…

Data sheet

Title: New York, 2 hours of the morning
original Title: Fear City
Realization: Abel Ferrara
Scenario: Nicolas St John
Production: Bruce Cohn Curtis
Music: Dick Halligan
Photography: James Lemmo (alias James Momel)
Assembly: Jack W. Holmes, Anthony Redman
Country of origin: the United States
Format: Colors - Mono
Kind: Thriller
Lasted: 110 minutes
Coming out date the USA: 1984
Coming out date France: July 18th, 1984

Distribution

Tom Berenger: Matt Rossi
Billy Dee Williams: Al Wheeler
Jack Scalia: Nicky Parzeno
Melanie Griffith: Loretta
Rossano Brazzi : Dye with carmine
Rae Dawn Chong: Leila

Around film

It has as a framework the clubs of striptease of Times Square, at the time (today completed) where this district symbolized the defect and the night urban violence which constituted one of the many myths of the city. It is a night thriller with the traditional and a little dated screen, but in which one recognizes the disillusioned blackness of Ferrara, as of the topics who are expensive to him, like the culpability and the redemption.

However the scenario masks a remake of Mr. Cursed the of Fritz Lang where the strippers replaced the small children. It is a film which one can describe as hinge. After her small thrillers, Ferrara reaches a film with sizeable budget equipped with a true casting with young promising actors: Melanie Griffith and Tom Berenger, but also Billy Dee Williams known for the role of Lando Calrissian in Starwars. Contrary to film of Lang, the killer is not the central figure of film. Where the German film shows a character of small middle-class man to the catch with his death instinct and a deviating sexuality, Ferrara seizes the character of the tormented boxer. In film, the killer is the personification of the death instinct of Matt. The boxer will have to overcome his culpability to have killed on the boxing ring to come to end of the serial killer… The film thus hides a certain amorality which the last counterpart of the police officer summarizes: having killed the killer Matt becomes a hero.

A last track: the flash-backs of Matt on its combat constitute an implicit quotation of film of John Ford the quiet Man, reference which one seldom crosses in the scenario writer but who it is interesting to raise.

One can also notice the first elements of dialogs between two scenario writers: Ferrara and Scorsese. In the scenes where the godfather intervenes, Matt finds it in a Trattoria. Ferrara adopts a catholic treatment then (referring to the catholic iconography of the meeting). The scenario writer knows Mean Streets and Taxi Driver but Scorsese will apply truly the catholic iconography to the Maffia only with Freed the and Casino, therefore well after this film. Let us recall that for much Bad Lieutenant is a continuation of Mean Streets.

Anecdotes

(Lu on imdb) the film in the beginning was produced by the 20th Century-Fox. The scenes of naked, murder and the language of the characters were worth with film of annoy with Fox and MPAA. The Major resold then film with Aquarius Releasing, an independent company for its exploitation in rooms. MPAA necessitated cuts whose traces remain in the cutting of certain scenes of striptease and of murders which are assembled in Jump cut.

External bond

Card-index IMDb

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