1982 - STILL OF THE NIGHT, misfired tribute to Alfred Hitchcock

Probably one of the worst films I have recently seen.  This attempt at a Hitchcock type of thriller is a complete misfire.  The plot such that it is involves the  murder of Meryl Streep's lover.  Psychiatrist Roy Scheider sets out to find the killer all the time wondering if Streep is the murderer.

The director and screenwriter Robert Benton for some reason got it into his head that he wanted to pay tribute to Alfred Hitchcock's films.  There are references to Vertigo, The Birds, North by Northwest and Spellbound.  Benton has set up a series of clues for Scheider to solve and we dutifully sit there as he goes through the crime solving motions.  What Benton apparently forgot was that Hitchcock rarely made whodunits.  Mystery stories were not a primary interest for Hitchcock in his films.

  

Meryl Streep has been directed to play one of Hitchcock's famous "cool blondes."  She has gone on record as saying that this is one of her worst performances in a film, no argument here.  Scheider is I guess the Jimmy Stewart character. a man obsessed with mysterious Meryl.  But it's hard to understand what he sees in her bland and frankly uninteresting character. The fact of the matter is that the plot necessitates that he become involved in the murder mystery by falling in love with creepy Meryl even though it is never explained why he is so obsessed with her or exactly why he is even bothering to solve the murder.

The movie is so poorly directed that at the very least Benton could have  copied Hitchcock's visual style with some interesting camera angles but this film is shot almost like a TV show.  The cinematographer was Nestor Almendros who had done outstanding work for Eric Rohmer, Terrence Malik  and  Francois Truffaut, but you won't find anything special about his photography in this film.

Running time, 93 minutes.