Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

The Morning After Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson June 12, 2023

As Jane Fonda was preparing for her role in The Morning After (1986), she considered the fact that she had not played a drunk before. She wanted to show audiences that she could stretch her acting range. As Fonda related to a press corps in New York while promoting the film, she immersed herself in the research for the part, consulting doctors and even attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. She wanted to feel like it was to be inebriated so she literally became drunk before the picture started shooting. Screenwriter James Cresson, who used the pen name James Hicks when he wrote the script for The Morning After, apparently wrote the movie's main role with Fonda in mind. Joan Bunke, the longtime film critic for The Des Moines (IA) Register, probably made an uncredited reference to the press kit's production notes when she stated that Hicks (i.e., Cresson) told Fonda that he modeled her character of Alexandra Sternbergen after Gail Russell, a short-lived actress who succumbed to alcoholism after appearing in several films for Paramount in the 1940s.

Alex Sternbergen (Jane Fonda) has awoken on a bed in an unfamiliar setting. She's startled when she turns and finds a man laying next to her who's drenched in blood. She's even more shocked when she sees a kitchen knife lodged in his chest. A hungover Alex roams around the loft where she was staying in Los Angeles. She can't recall events of the previous evening. She pours herself a drink and tries to wash the blood off her hands. Not knowing what to do next, she telephones her estranged husband Joaquin "Jacky" Manero (Raul Julia), a Bel Air hairdresser she's still cordial with. He picks up Alex's call on his car phone and advises her to call the police. Although Alex considers herself a good person, she ponders whether she suffered a blackout and could have stabbed the man before she passed out. She knows that all evidence would link her to the homicide so she heads to her Hollywood home, packs her bags, and drives to Los Angeles International Airport. Alex wants to book a flight to San Francisco but because it's the Thanksgiving holiday, all flights are book. After an ill-fated attempt to coax the airport supervisor to get her on a red eye (as well as a flight to Vegas), she gets in a minor accident while trying to exit the airport. As she's pursued, she finds a man fixing a beat-up 1956 Chevrolet convertible. He's just seen his daughter off and gladly lets Alex hitch a ride. It turns out that this Turner Kendall (Jeff Bridges) is an ex-cop who retired early with a disability pension. He now works as an appliance repairman. Alex desperately could use him to repair her problems. (He's a recovered alcoholic himself.) While Turner is warm and good-natured, he's also something of a racist and bigot, which Alex is not. Alex and Turner each could use the other and that's also where the romantic sparks fly.

The Morning After is part murder mystery and part character study. It doesn't work as well as the former because there's only a small set of characters to consider as suspects. If Alex didn't kill Bobby Korshack (Geoffrey Scott), a photographer and magazine publisher of female bodybuilders, then the rest of the list of suspects is quite short. The late great Raul Julia could have been used a lot more than he is here. Also, Jacky's girlfriend Isabel Harding (Diane Salinger) is introduced way too late in the picture. Director Sidney Lumet and Cresson (as well as uncredited writers Jay Presson Allen and David Rayfiel, who must have done some script doctoring) are more interested in the character arcs and intertwined fates of Alex and Turner. Fonda and Jeff Bridges share natural chemistry. They might be "opposites attract" but the actors are well matched. police Sgt. Greenbaum (Richard Foronjy)

The Morning After received mixed reviews but critical reception was tipped higher on the favorability scale across North America. Wayne Moriarty of the Canadian daily paper The Leader-Post named it one of the best movies of 1986. Henry Edgar titled part of the headline in his review, which appeared in the Daily Press/The Times-Herald (Newport News, VA), a "1st-rate thriller." He reasoned that it's an "exhilarating suspense thriller" and a "hypnotic film with one surprise followed by anoth­er." The Calgary Herald's Fred Haeseker prasied the two leads: "[T]he pleasure of seeing two of America’s finest actors working together for the first time, both at the top of their form, make The Morning After one of the few bright spots in an exception­ally weak Christmas movie sea­son. It’s a solid piece of enter­tainment that shows the kind of attention to detail which is becoming ever more rare." Likewise, Eleanor O’Sullivan of the Asbury Park Press (Neptune, NJ) called the pairing of Fonda and Bridges "a dream screen team. Their partnership is so effortless and assured, so supremely confident, it goes right off the meter."

The Morning After Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Shout! Factory's recent release of The Morning After arrives on an MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50 (feature size: 28.3 GB). The boutique label advertises this transfer as deriving from a "new 2023 2K scan of the interpositive." The film appears in its original theatrical exhibition ratio of 1.85:1. This is practically a flawless restoration with a pleasing grain structure. The grain becomes coarse early in the picture when Alex sidles across the photographer's studio (see Screenshot #20). You can see a thick layer of it in the medium close-up of Alex (#19). Grain is also heavily prevalent in extreme long shots of exteriors (frame grabs 21-22). The swimming pool creates a nice reflection off the characters (see screen capture #s 5 and 12-13) Cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak shot in pastels throughout Los Angeles. The colors are well-saturated on buildings in the city's warehouse district. Print reviews at the time of the film's theatrical run confirm its color schemes as represented on this Blu-ray. For example, George Williams of The Sacramento Bee wrote: "This film seems to exaggerate the blue skies, the green lawns and unusual colors of today's L.A., the royal blues, salmon pinks, terracottas, turquoises and reds." The walls of Jacky's salon have a peachy pink to them. Carole Kass of the Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch also observed: "Some houses were paint­ed pink, others blue. A warehouse was sprayed rust and ocher." The Philadelphia Inquirer's Desmond Ryan lauded Lumet for created a different look for LA: "Dozens of films are made in LA every year, but the city has never looked like this. Lumet has caught the blinding blue skies, the garish colors of buildings and interiors, and cre­ates shots of lonely figures caught against and and anony­mous cityscapes. He evokes a haunting sense of loneliness and aimlessness." Shout! has encoded the feature at an average bitrate of 34.00 Mbps, with an overall bit rate of 39.50 Mbps.

Shout! has created twelve chapter breaks for the 103-minute film.

The Morning After Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Shout! has supplied a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono mix (1639 kbps, 24-bit) as the sole sound track. This is a very good master with no audible hiss. All sounds are relegated to the front speakers. It helps to have the sound a little above normal listening levels to comprehend all spoken words (including noises from the TV at the very beginning). When having the volume turned up a bit, I also could clearly and distinctly hear the bass and synths from Paul Chihara's score.

Optional English SDH are available for the feature.

The Morning After Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Shout! has ported over a commentary track with Sidney Lumet which the director recorded for the 2005 Warner DVD. The studio reissued the disc in 2016 under the Warner Archive Collection banner. Shout! has also recorded two new interviews.

• Audio Commentary with Director Sidney Lumet - in this feature-length track, Lumet muses about his frequent collaboration with Henry Fonda and long friendship with Jane, which started during one of the movies her father starred in for Sidney. The director delves into the big adjustment he had to make shooting in Los Angeles and how DP Andrzej Bartkowiak handled the lensing of it. Lumet addresses the challenges of melodrama and how he tried to avoid the clichés of this sub-genre. He also speaks about working with Jeff Bridges. Lumet recalls how Jane first approached him with the script for The Morning After many years earlier and then presented him with a revised draft four years later. He neglects to mention, which he does in his commentary for Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, is that Jane had to go back and convince him several times why the movie was worth making. Lumet had repeatedly declined to direct it. In English, not subtitled.

• Serious Bender: Remembering THE MORNING AFTER – An Interview with Associate Producer/Assistant Director Wolfgang Glattes (12:07, 1080p) - Glattes talks about working with Bob Fosse and Lumet, who he says did pre-production in New York. Glattes also discusses filming in Los Angeles and the various locales around town. He compares Lumet's preparatory process and filming methods with that of Ingmar Bergman, who Glattes also collaborated with. He shares some telling anecdotes of Lumet on the set of The Morning After. Glattes speaks in English, not subtitled.

• A Night to Remember: Composing THE MORNING AFTER – An Interview with Composer Paul Chihara (13:17, 1080p) - Chihara opens with describing his collaboration with Lumet on Prince of the City. He talks about the jazzy theme for Fonda's character and why he chose to write it for soprano saxophone. Chihara also goes into his musical background and education. He explains the approach Lumet took for his movies. Chihara makes a factual error when he states that The Morning After won a couple of Oscars. The picture just received one nomination. Chihara speaks in English, not subtitled.

• Trailer (2:32, 1080p) - Fox's original theatrical trailer for The Morning After presented in 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen. It sports some film artifacts but is in generally good condition.

The Morning After Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Morning After works best as a character study of the Fonda and Bridges characters. It's considerably less effective as a melodrama and whodunit. The narrative would have benefited from earlier introductions to some of the secondary characters and the addition of more characters to the plot. Shout! Factory delivers an outstanding transfer from a recent 2K restoration. Grain is most visible in daylight interiors (especially when there are whites) and sunny exteriors. There are fluctuations to the amount of grain, but when plainly visible, the grain structure is stable. Shout! has retained the fine feature-length audio commentary with Lumet. The two recent interviews are relatively brief but still informative. DEFINITELY RECOMMENDED to fans of Fonda, Bridges, and Lumet!