Poor Paul Hackett. A chance meeting with a woman in a diner leads him later to taxi some distance to where she is staying. Once there he realizes that things are not going well and he wants out, but he just can't extricate himself from the complexity of circumstances that prevent his finding his way back home.
I found this film to be one of the most artificially constructed and highly stylized I have seen. I reacted to it more as one long anxiety dream than as comedy, although in a different context, like Charlie Chaplin moving from one frustration to another, I can see the comedic potential. Perhaps on second viewing I would be more receptive to the comedy rather than the anxiety.
Paul's interactions with the people he encounters on his nighttime odyssey are all, well, rather weird. So weird in fact that none of them is quite believable. But, I suppose they are no more than exaggerated riffs on personality types that are more familiar, at least in New York.
An intriguing aspect of the film is that, while recognizing it as pure artifice, I was sucked into the story. I suppose that is testament to Scorsese's skill as a filmmaker.
I found this film to be one of the most artificially constructed and highly stylized I have seen. I reacted to it more as one long anxiety dream than as comedy, although in a different context, like Charlie Chaplin moving from one frustration to another, I can see the comedic potential. Perhaps on second viewing I would be more receptive to the comedy rather than the anxiety.
Paul's interactions with the people he encounters on his nighttime odyssey are all, well, rather weird. So weird in fact that none of them is quite believable. But, I suppose they are no more than exaggerated riffs on personality types that are more familiar, at least in New York.
An intriguing aspect of the film is that, while recognizing it as pure artifice, I was sucked into the story. I suppose that is testament to Scorsese's skill as a filmmaker.