Still of the Night

1982
PG
1h 33m

IMDb RATING

6.0/10

6.6K

YOUR RATING

Meryl Streep and Roy Scheider in Still of the Night (1982)

A Manhattan psychiatrist probes a patient's murder and falls for the victim's mysterious mistress.

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Crime Drama Mystery

A Manhattan psychiatrist probes a patient's murder and falls for the victim's mysterious mistress.A Manhattan psychiatrist probes a patient's murder and falls for the victim's mysterious mistress.A Manhattan psychiatrist probes a patient's murder and falls for the victim's mysterious mistress.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

6.0/10

6.6K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 2 nominations total

Trivia
After making this film, writer/director Robert Benton said that he regretted the emphasis placed by critics upon its being a Alfred Hitchcock imitation. Benton said that he had intended it to be more a modern equivalent of the 1940s wave of noir thrillers about psychoanalysis (a group of films of which Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) is the most famous example, but not the only one) and that the directors he was actively using as direct influences on him were Jacques Tourneur and Fritz Lang, with the script being heavily influenced by Lang's The Woman in the Window (1944). Benton summed up the situation saying, "This (genre) territory is so staked out by Hitchcock that there is nothing you can do that won't remind someone of him."

Goofs
As the woman with the scarf on her head first walks into Central Park the heels on her shoes are a thick, low to mid height style but as she continues to walk through the park the heels on her shoes change to a higher, thinner style heel.

Quotes
Doctor Sam Rice: Now listen to me! On account of you, I'm an accessory to something. I don't know what! I'm withholding evidence. I'm obstructing justice. I'm gonna get my license revoked if I'm not thrown into jail first. And on top of that, I've just spent fifteen thousand dollars for a painting I don't even like!

Connections
Referenced in The Last Horror Film (1982)

User reviews72

Review

Featured review

7/10

A quiet, underplayed thriller, with some excellent visuals and lighting.

Quiet thriller with great acting from Meryl Streep, taken a slightly different route with the paranoid performance from Roy Schnieder. Unfortunately some other of the other performances are quite poor, with the standard dumbed down cops. Slow to pick up, it's worth sticking with past the stock plot setup routines. There's some neat camera work to strengthen the guessing game and make you feel the paranoia and fear of the doctor. There's a fantastic sequence in central park where the Doctor follows a mystery woman, losing her beneath the light \ dark pools of street lights. Using the sound of her footsteps to pull your attention forward to a tunnel. The final moments of that sequence are brilliant. Throughout the lighting is used to great effect with all other senses and even performances extremely restrained. A good film which I'm sure has influenced many others of this genre.