Color of Night
| Color of Night | |
|---|---|
| File:Color of night.jpg French poster for Color of Night. | |
| Directed by | Richard Rush |
| Starring | Bruce Willis Jane March Ruben Blades Scott Bakula |
| Music by | Dominic Frontiere |
Running time | 121 min, 140 min (Directors Cut) |
| Language | English |
Color of Night is a 1994 erotic mystery thriller film starring Bruce Willis. It is one of two well-known works by director Richard Rush, the other being The Stunt Man. As a measure of the difference between the two, The Stunt Man had three Academy Award nominations, while this film received a 1994 Golden Raspberry Award. To its credit, the film also won a Golden Globe nomination in the category Best Original Song - Motion Picture, for its haunting theme song "The Color of the Night", performed by Lauren Christy.
Since its release on VHS and DVD it has gained status as a cult film, and did very well in VHS rentals and sales, and has often been compared to another cult film, Eyes of Laura Mars. They are both poorly reviewed erotic thrillers with big stars, themes of alternative lifestyles, and award-winning, haunting theme songs. Both films could be considered examples of the giallo genre of film. They also both star Brad Dourif, and both contain scenes with visible boom mikes.
Color of Night received a certain degree of notoriety for the graphic sex scenes between Willis and March and the film also features many nude scenes between the two main actors, briefly receiving an NC-17 rating before Rush edited it sufficiently to receive an R; the uncut version was later released in a "Director's Cut" DVD. It was the second film in which March appeared in explicit sex scenes (the first being The Lover.)
Template:Spoiler The plot of the film is clearly influenced by the movies of Alfred Hitchcock, particularly Vertigo. Willis plays Bill Capa, a psychiatrist who suffers, bizarrely, from stress-induced color blindness, caused by the sight of the bloody body of a patient, clad in a bright green dress, after she committed suicide by jumping from his office window high in an office building (compare the fall at the beginning of Vertigo which precipitates the phobia in the James Stewart character). The title refers to the fact that he sees only shades of gray.
To restart his life, Capa travels to California and visits a friend, another psychiatrist (Scott Bakula). His friend is soon murdered, however, and Capa is plunged into the mystery of the friend's murder, possibly committed by one of his extremely neurotic patients. He also conducts an affair with Rose (Jane March), a mysterious girl who inserts herself into his life.
The Hitchcockian plot makes it clear that some deception is going on, and indeed it is easy to discern, long before the denouement, that different characters are in fact the same person (cf. Vertigo, again). This resulted in one performer being nominated for a Worst Supporting Actor and a Worst Actress award for the same movie in the same year.