Night on Earth

• Los Angeles From Los Angeles airport, a taxi driver named Corky is bringing agent casting agent Victoria Snelling to Beverly Hills . On the way, she smokes a lot, swears and tells the passenger about her life plans (she wants to become a mechanic). At the end of the journey, Victoria suggests that Corky go through a screen test for a role in the film, but she refuses.

• New York The good-natured taxi driver Helmut Grokenberger is an immigrant from Dresden ( GDR ), a former circus clown . He does not speak English well, does not know how to use an automatic transmission, and does not know New York at all. His passenger, African-American Yo-Yo, drives himself.

• Paris A taxi driver in a bomber , a native of Côte d'Ivoire , carries a blind woman who rides on her usual night walk along the Seine . On the way, the taxi driver asks her naive and tactless questions about how to be blind. The passenger assures that she “sees” with her inner vision no worse than him, sighted. The driver does not believe her. As a proof of her innocence, a woman accurately identifies from which region of Africa a taxi driver originates from an accent. The driver lets the passenger out on the embankment, gets underway and then crashes - his car collides with another, driving towards. A blind woman already from afar hears a blow and a rattle of metal, as well as the screams of the second participant in the accident : “- Where are you going! Are you blind ?! ”The woman smiling with satisfaction, slowly moving away along the night promenade of the Seine.

• Rome The cheeky and sexually preoccupied taxi driver takes the passenger priest and decides to confess to him along the way. The taxi driver’s car, the old and shabby Fiat 128 , rushes along the dark, dirty and bumpy streets of old Rome. Carried away by his own “ confession, ” the taxi driver does not make out the road, driving a couple of times past the same young couple making love right on the street under the lamp. The driver (his first “love” was a pumpkin , then a sheep , then his brother’s wife) does not notice how the passenger becomes ill and he loses signs of life. A frightened taxi driver seats the body on the bench, and, covering the open eyes of the priest with his dark glasses, leaves.

• Helsinki Finnish taxi driver Mika carries three drunk friends. One of them, Aki, is sleeping, and his comrades say that he had the worst day in his life: he was fired from work, his new car was wrecked, he learned about the pregnancy of his 16-year-old daughter, and his wife decided to divorce and drove him out of the house . To this, Mika replies that it can be worse, and tells her story. She and his wife Aeya really wanted a baby, but their daughter was born prematurely, and the doctor said that she would live no more than a week. To endure the pain of the loss, Mika decided not to love his child. Three weeks passed, and the daughter was still alive. Mika again allowed love for her into her heart, but she died that very day. Passengers are filled with sympathy for Mika and understand that “nothing terrible happened to Aki,” his troubles are nonsense. Two friends of Aki get out of the car and a taxi driver wakes Aki, who pays for the fare from his severance pay. Getting out of the taxi, Aki, perplexed, sits on the snowy sidewalk.

Director's comment:

Shooting inside a car is very difficult. Everyone who filmed is unlikely to want to repeat this experience. It was doubly difficult for us, because I wanted to not only tell the stories of the characters, but also convey the atmosphere of the night streets of these cities. In Finland, a car broke down right on the tracks in front of the tram. The actors could not quickly get out of the car due to the equipment fixed on it, we barely managed to stop the tram. Cameraman Fred Elms himself controlled the camera when it was necessary to take complex angles. And on the street at that time there was 14 degrees of frost. In Italy, our film crew aroused suspicion among the police. Since we left our passports at the hotel, we had to sit under lock and key for five hours.

- Movie Review on Around TV website

Los Angeles

• Winona Ryder - Corky
• Gina Rowlands - Victoria Snelling

New York

• Giancarlo Esposito - Yo-Yo
• Armin Müller-Stahl - Helmut Grokenberger
• Rosie Perez - Angela

Paris

• Isaac de Bankole - taxi driver
• Beatrice Dahl - Blind
• Emil Abossolo-Mbo - passenger
• Pascal Nzonzi - Passenger

Rome

• Roberto Benigni - Gino
• Paolo Bonachelli - Priest

Helsinki

• Matti Pellonpyaya - Mika
• Kari Vyanyanen - passenger
• Sakari Kuosmanen - passenger
• Tomi Salmela - passenger

To create the soundtrack, the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu was originally invited, but the music he wrote did not satisfy the director, and he turned to Tom Waits .

Fred Elms was awarded the Independent Spirit Award for Best Cinematography in 1993. ^[one]

• Tom Waits - Back In The Good Old World
• Tom Waits - Good Old World
• Davie Allan & the Arrows - Cycle-Delic
• Blue Cheer - Summertime Blues (lyrics by Eddie Cochran and Jerry Capehart)

• " Night on Earth ” on the Internet Movie Database
• The director's rejected version of the music for the film