No director has been imitated more than Alfred Hitchcock, and Still Of The Night is yet another in a seemingly endless line of homages to the Master's work. After the gory excesses of suspense movies like Dressed To Kill, it is quite nice to get back to a style of thriller-making that is comparatively subtle. Still Of The Night doesn't particularly rely on buckets of blood and graphic violence yet, thanks to skillful direction, atmospheric music and clever writing, it is genuinely jumpy from start to finish. Robert Benton, fresh from his Best Director Oscar for Kramer Vs Kramer, has fashioned a very effective thriller in which a few loose ends in the plotting are papered over with an air of sustained tension.
Psychiatrist Sam Rice (Roy Scheider)is going through a mid-life crisis and really only has his work to cling to in order to maintain a semblance of normality. Among Sam's patients is a guy named George Bynum (Josef Sommer), an antiques dealer, and it is the gruesome murder of George that plunges Sam into a life-threatening mystery. Shortly after the killing George's neurotic mistress Brooke Reynolds (Meryl Streep) turns up at Sam's practice seeking psychiatric help. With his own emotions hardly at their sharpest, Sam quickly finds himself drawn to his new patient.... but is he playing a dangerous game with his own life? Sam's mother, Grace (Jessica Tandy), warns him that he should not trust this alluring stranger. The detective investigating the earlier murder, Joe Vitucci (Joe Grifasi), points up evidence that may indicate Brooke is actually the killer. Sam is convinced that she is innocent, but as the mystery unravels he finds himself in increasingly perilous danger....
As in any good suspense movie, the solution is kept well-disguised until the very end. Benton delights in leading his audience up various blind alleys, adding layers to the mystery and generating constant tension about what will happen next. The actors are uniformly excellent: Scheider convincing as the weary shrink, Streep twitchy and suspicious as a potential killer, Grifasi likably plodding as the detective on the case, and Tandy brilliant (as always) as the hero's worried mother. The film is shot in grey, dull colours that link very nicely with the dreary dead-end state that Scheider's character has reached in his life. This low-key approach also heightens the film's suspense, placing the frightening events into an everyday context that everyone in the audience can relate to. With its 87 minute running time, the film sticks closely to what is necessary and doesn't get lost amidst tons of extraneous detail. The lapses in logic prevent Still Of The Night from being a truly outstanding movie, but on the whole it remains a solid and very commendable thriller. Those who like these kind of movies will, I'm sure, thoroughly enjoy this one.
Psychiatrist Sam Rice (Roy Scheider)is going through a mid-life crisis and really only has his work to cling to in order to maintain a semblance of normality. Among Sam's patients is a guy named George Bynum (Josef Sommer), an antiques dealer, and it is the gruesome murder of George that plunges Sam into a life-threatening mystery. Shortly after the killing George's neurotic mistress Brooke Reynolds (Meryl Streep) turns up at Sam's practice seeking psychiatric help. With his own emotions hardly at their sharpest, Sam quickly finds himself drawn to his new patient.... but is he playing a dangerous game with his own life? Sam's mother, Grace (Jessica Tandy), warns him that he should not trust this alluring stranger. The detective investigating the earlier murder, Joe Vitucci (Joe Grifasi), points up evidence that may indicate Brooke is actually the killer. Sam is convinced that she is innocent, but as the mystery unravels he finds himself in increasingly perilous danger....
As in any good suspense movie, the solution is kept well-disguised until the very end. Benton delights in leading his audience up various blind alleys, adding layers to the mystery and generating constant tension about what will happen next. The actors are uniformly excellent: Scheider convincing as the weary shrink, Streep twitchy and suspicious as a potential killer, Grifasi likably plodding as the detective on the case, and Tandy brilliant (as always) as the hero's worried mother. The film is shot in grey, dull colours that link very nicely with the dreary dead-end state that Scheider's character has reached in his life. This low-key approach also heightens the film's suspense, placing the frightening events into an everyday context that everyone in the audience can relate to. With its 87 minute running time, the film sticks closely to what is necessary and doesn't get lost amidst tons of extraneous detail. The lapses in logic prevent Still Of The Night from being a truly outstanding movie, but on the whole it remains a solid and very commendable thriller. Those who like these kind of movies will, I'm sure, thoroughly enjoy this one.