There are many reasons to love Martin Scorsese. For his fiery mysticism, for his cinematographic wisdom, for his transcendental conception of violence, for his soulless and crude sense of humor, for his unredeemed optimism, for his low voice, for his chifle voice at the rhythm of a machine gun, for his secondary appearance kind of ‘The Godfather’, for his wooded eyebrows, just because or, simply, because ‘‘Wow, what a night!’.
Very far from the canon that has been made ‘Taxi driver’ o ‘Wild bull’ cornerstones of contemporary cinema, the comedy released in 1985 has grown over time to become something similar to a myth as carnal and close as it is essentially eternal. Approaching this film right now (you can do it whenever you want thanks to Filmin, for example) produces a strange feeling of alienated or simply strange familiarity. The world seen on the screen without mobile phones and full of those mythological beasts from the 80s called ‘yuppies‘ scattered throughout a defunct New York Soho of ‘lofts’ occupied by artists; That world, we said, seems almost extraterrestrial. And yet, the anxiety that the explosive device transmits from the first second designed by Scorsese, it couldn’t be more modern, more ours. Suddenly, the time after 9/11, the pandemic and the polarization of social networks has made ‘Wow, what a night!’ the best portrait of contemporary anguish.
The one who answers is Griffin Dunne (Nueva York, 1955), protagonist – as well as producer – of the film with an impossible guttural pronunciation for someone not trained in snorting jacks. He ‘After hours’ of the original title seems, now that he knows about the spark of the Spanish translators, almost impertinent. The reason for the interview is supposed to be ‘Ex-husbands’, the production signed by Noah Pritzker about male melancholy and where he reunites with Rossana Arquette (an essential and traumatic piece of ‘Wow, what a night!’) that recently competed at the San Sebastián Festival.
But Dunne seems already trained in changing the conversation. “In some ways,” he reasons at the first mention of Scorsese’s work, “the film was ahead of its time. It has some premonition. The film captured an energy that cinema had not dealt with until then. The idea that anxiety could be a source of humor was something completely new. And perhaps for this reason, it was not fully appreciated at the time. The audience felt a little uncomfortable because they didn’t understand that the anguish of losing the only $20 bill you have or not being allowed on the subway because they just raised the price could be fun. How can you laugh at someone who suffers? However, the fun was there. The funny thing wasn’t seeing someone having a bad time. The really fun thing is that you could be that someone because everything that happened to my character could happen to you.” It’s clear.
To situate ourselves, Martin Scorsese came to ‘‘Wow, what a night!’ in the worst of ways. He had stopped his great project of character more than just personal’The last temptation of Christ and still had not recovered from the failure that was ‘The king of comedy’. Amy Robinson, producer then actress, then proposed to the director to take charge of a project without an owner and he accepted it like the shipwrecked who accepts one last plank to hold on to. In recent statements, Robinson confessed that Scorsese ended up admitting that thanks to the film he regained his love for cinema. Exaggeration or not, the truth is irrefutable. And the latter is a film launched breathlessly through a dark night of the soul populated by mythological and extravagant creatures such as Linda Fiorentino, the sinister ice cream seller Catherine O’Hara, Verna Bloom, the aforementioned Rossana Arquette and a disturbing Teri Garr. Without forgetting Cheech y Chong.