Night Moves (1975)

Night Moves is directed by Arthur Penn and written by Alan Sharp. It stars Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren, Susan Clark, James Woods, Melanie Griffith, Edward Binns, Harris Yulin, Kenneth Mars and Janet Ward. Music is by Michael Small and cinematography by Bruce Surtees.

Former footballer turned private detective in Los Angeles Harry Moseby (Hackman), gets hired by an ageing actress to track down her trust- funded daughter Delly Grastner (Griffith), who is known to be in Florida. With his own personal life shaken by his wife's infidelity, Harry dives into the Grasten case with determination. Unfortunately nothing is as it first seems and it's not long before Harry is mired in murky goings on...

It sounds kind of bleak. Or is it just the way you tell it?

The locale is often bright and sunny but that's about the only thing that is in this excellent neo-noir. Harking back, and doffing its cap towards, the noir detective films of the classic cycle, Night Moves is ripe with characters who are either dubious or damaged. Protagonist Harry Moseby is thrust into a melancholic world that he has no control over, but he doesn't know this fact. As the mystery at the core of the dense plot starts to unravel, there's a bleakness, a 1970s air of cynicism, that pervades the narrative. Culminating in a finale that's suitably dark and ambiguous.

Harry thinks if you call him Harry again he's gonna make you eat that cat!

Alan Sharp's (Ulzana's Raid) terrific screenplay is appropriately as sharp as a razor. Dialogue is often hardboiled or zinging with wit, and the conversations come with sadness or desperation. Be it chatter about a fateful chess move, sexual enlightenment or the pains of childhood and bad parenting, Sharp's writing provides fascinating characters operating in a tense thriller environment.

Listen Delly, I know it doesn't make much sense when you're sixteen. Don't worry. When you get to be forty, it isn't any better.

Arthur Penn brilliantly threads it all together, as he hones a great performance out of Hackman and notable turns from the support players, he smoothly blends action with pulsing unease. There's nudity on show, but in Penn's hands it is never used for gratuitous purpose, it represents dangerous fantasies or dented psyches. Small's jazzy score is a fine tonal accompaniment, and Surtees' Technicolor photography provides deft mood enhancements for the interior and exterior sequences.

Biting and bitter, Night Moves is essential neo-noir. 9/10

Fmovies: Coming back to NIGHT MOVES a quarter of a century later is a confronting experience. I was admirer of Alan Sharp's (HIRED HAND and LAST RUN) and now it's easier to see how he'd distorted the American crime movie with the influence of the European art cinema. Much the same thing is happening in Sam Mendes' current films.

The process is knowing and resonant and the film shows Arthur Penn at the top of his game, though it didn't find the same public his most famous work. This dark intrigue stuff works, partly because it's too dense to be immediately absorbed and because the characters are so vivid - even if it is hard to believe that all these great women want to take off their shirts for Gene Hackman in his tan rug. It is however one of Hackman's best outings - whether he liked it or not.

Lots of great detail - the contrast between Hackman's study with the black and white TV where sports will kill his eyes and Yullin's tasteful home, which makes us share Hackman's loathing of the character, feeding dolphins, the glass bottom boat or the theatre viewing (which respects the different format of the two cameras for once.) The performances are consistently vivid, reflecting well on Penn, with soon to be stars Griffith (particularly memorable) and Woods running level with largely forgotten character people. Janet Ward, for one, really registers.

Even if it needs theatrical viewing to be appreciated, Bruce Surtees' dim lighting, characteristically shading eyes, is atmospheric but the post "New Wave" fad of dispensing with establishing shots and opticals is now confusing and jerky. The score irritates too.

The line about paint drying has now passed into common usage but I like "blind, Albino, s**t-eating alligators" as much.

I used to use this one to teach screen writing decades back. I rate that a good call.

This is the perfect role for Hackman as the aging sports star unable to find his role in life once the playing days are over. He is the accidental jock, too sensitive to play the stereotype and so finding no sense of belonging. He has become a detective but he is a bumbling amateur compared to a Philip Marlowe type. He is shy and hestitant and is frequently made to feel discomfort by the seedy, untrustworthy people he comes into contact with. He has none of Marlowe's self assurance. It begs the question why has he become a detective? Maybe it is partly due to his abandonment by his father who years later Hackman tracks down only to fail in confronting him. He is condemned to search for people to whom he is of no importance.

This idea of the lonely seeker is Hackman's own turf. His affable charm conveys a sense of a lifetime's wrongheaded idealism. In the wrong job, deluding himself, looking for a way out. Eventually, he is able to see clearly and see how his drifting has allowed the people around him to manipulate him in their games. Unlike many of this film's peers such as 'Chinatown', 'Taxi Driver', 'The Long Goodbye', we are not left to be slightly repulsed by the lead actor's ways. Hackman plays the everyman character as an affable, amateur sleuth whose hestitancy and chronic lack of commitment give him a fallibility more recognizable to an audience.

Night Moves fmovies. "Night Moves" was a surprise to me. I assumed it could be a far more simple mystery/action film, but the whole thing caught my attention and really amazed me. What a great study in murder, infidelity, cruelty, sex, and relationships between strangers. A kind of film noir with dark overtones and a slow but effective suspense, the story starts as a simple investigation about a runaway teenager, but grows more and more into a complex drama plenty of unexpected twists. Gene Hackman is superb as the rude detective, the rest of the cast is also in fine form, but the real shock is to see a very young, hot (and naked) Melanie Grifith doing a terrific performance. James Woods is also here, with less impact but great to see too. An excellent film, one of the finest 70's underrated movies.

In Los Angeles, the private detective and former athlete Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is hired by the retired obscure Hollywood actress Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward) to find her 16 year-old missing daughter Delly Grastner (Melanie Griffith). Harry discovers that the runaway girl has a promiscuous life and uses drugs, and he tracks down her last boyfriend Quinten (James Woods), who works as a mechanic on the sets. Meanwhile, Harry finds that his wife Ellen Moseby (Susan Clark) is cheating him and he has difficulties to handle the situation. Then he visits the stuntman Marv Ellman (Anthony Costello) and the stunt coordinator Joey Ziegler (Ed Binn) and follows the new lead, heading to Florida Keys, where Delly would be living with her stepfather Tom Iverson (John Crawford). Harry is welcomed by Paula (Jennifer Warren), who works with Tom in a boat and has an open relationship with him. After seeing an accident in the sea, the reluctant Delly surprisingly accepts to return to Los Angeles with Harry to live with her mother. Harry and Ellen have a long conversation trying to solve their marriage problems. When Harry learns that Delly has died in a car crash, he suspects of Quinten. But sooner he finds that the initially missing person case is actually a complex smuggling operation of a valuable artifact.

With the recent death of Arthur Penn, I decide to see again "Night Moves", a movie that I watched in the 80's and was forgotten in my collection. "Night Moves" is a different and complex detective story, supported by an engaging and flawed screenplay and great characters development. The top-notch actor Gene Hackman in the top of his successful career performs a detective that snoops the lives of other people and is incapable to see that his marriage is deteriorating. The 18 year-old Melanie Griffith in her first credited role is extremely sexy and beautiful, undressing easily along the film. It is also interesting to see James Woods also in the beginning of career in a supporting role. It is also great to see again the gorgeous vanished actresses Jennifer Warren and Susan Clark. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Um Lance no Escuro" ("A Bid in the Dark")

Note: On 26 October 2014 I saw this movie again on DVD and now my vote is eight.

Private investigator Harry Moseby (Hackman) has his hands full retrieving a teen runaway (Griffith) from the Florida Keys back to Los Angeles. A routine case shuffled off to him by a rival, the matter nevertheless evolves into a complicated multiple murder plot. Normally distant Harry has difficulty separating his personal feelings from the facts.

The first half of this film is such a dull and plodding downbeat soap opera that it challenges the patience of the viewer. The relationships of a group of emotionally broken people hinting at personal guilt over sordid pasts thrown together by less than ideal circumstances don't always tie in with the actual narrative. But they aren't really meant to.

The real mystery of the story rests within the human interactions and what is important vs what is trivial. Harry is in fact a very poor detective. He lets those few emotional connections he is able to make with people cloud his judgements whilst assuming guilt on the part of those he doesn't like. What makes him a hero nevertheless is that he doesn't quit even if it means discovering personal betrayal.

Telling moments are rife. The way different people react differently from each other is a continual source of confusion for Harry. His inability to connect with his own wife on an emotional level has made her feel alone even in their most intimate moments together. Yet he lets his guard down with the wrong kinds of complete strangers. It certainly isn't by choice that he has chosen misread bot the situation and the people surrounding it..

This is a more sophisticated form of detective story in that it offers an examination of the mindset of the detective - one who happens to be emotionally vulnerable and even a tad fragile.