11 Brilliantly Controversial Martin Scorsese Moments

9. After Hours - Rape, Murder, And Suicide Humour

After Raging Bull failed to become a huge box office success, Martin Scorsese wanted to make a clean start with his career, escaping his cocaine addiction and focusing on small-budget projects in the early 1980s. What resulted was cheerfully black humour from a man who had been on his deathbed not long ago. With the release of 1985's After Hours, Scorsese decided to observe one night in the life of a hapless New York City word processor (Griffin Dunne), a man venturing to SoHo with only one goal on his mind: to hook up with Marcy (Rosanna Arquette) after a chance meeting in a coffee shop. What resulted was a film that included some of Scorsese's most hysterical (and cringe-worthy) comedy of his career. From watching Dunne sit in unfulfilled silence as Marcy confides in him the details of being raped, to Dunne seeing a wife shooting her husband and quipping "I'll probably get blamed for that," After Hours explores the ultimate trip into the paranoid. Though violence and sexuality have been examined at length on film, Scorsese's cynicism provides a new lens for looking at people's problems equally rather than only sympathizing with the protagonist. When Marcy talks about her rape, the inclination is to become irritated with Dunne, clearly only half-listening in order to get laid. When he's being chased by a mob down the streets of SoHo, one identifies more with the mass, chasing a threat to their homes. Despite the fact that the protagonist is helplessly swept up in the events around him, his lack of proactivity and the negative effects it has on the people he meets evinces humour from the most uncomfortable places. Though the comedy is black, and some of the humour will test a person's openness to satirizing the horrible realities of life, After Hours goes down as one of Scorsese's more underrated films, and remains a cult classic.