Martin Scorsese described making his 1985 black comedy After Hours as “doing penance” because its low-budget, tightly scheduled production pushed him far beyond his usual working conditions. The film mattered as a test of whether he could still make a feature with the speed and energy of his earlier, more improvised career, after the commercial disappointment of The King of Comedy.

Scorsese shot After Hours in 40 days and nights in downtown New York, likening the experience to “40 days in the desert, fasting”. It was his first fiction film since the early 1970s without Robert De Niro and was made from Joseph Minion’s script on a shoestring budget; while not generally regarded as one of his greatest films, it performed reasonably at the box office and later gained cult appreciation.