Night Moves (1975) Reviews

• A strange, strange film

  sunznc2014-03-29

  Night Moves is not a bad film. It's actually quite good. It is also off-beat and a just a little bit odd but not quirky. It is not hard to figure out why a young girl has run away from home when we see her mother, a washed up, alcoholic living in the Hollywood Hills. What is odd is trying to figure out the relationship between her, her stepfather and his girlfriend in the Florida Keys where she has gone to live. It is hinted that the stepfather is not just a stepfather. Even stranger is Jennifer Warren's odd, abrupt, salty behavior in the film and the the strange dialog written for her. At one point, Gene Hackman even tells her he is tired of her "ping-pong talk". Was that written for the benefit of the audience or did he improvise? I felt puzzled by much of her performance. It is also painful, really painful to watch Gene Hackman's wife struggle with their relationship and her learning new things about her husband. Yes, a strange, strange little film. The acting is almost too revealing. I can't quite wrap my brain around the whole thing. I think it will be appreciated by fans of films from the 70's.

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• The masterpiece of 70s American anti-detective movies (possible spoilers)

  the red duchess2000-12-21

  When you notice that a boat, on which the detective sees the crucial evidence, is hit and shot at, and finally 'solves' the crime, is called 'Point of View', you know you should have been watching harder. 'Night Moves' is the greatest of the 70s American anti-detective movies influenced by 'Vertigo', Antonioni and Bertolucci; films that used a genre all about solving the crime and re-ordering a ruptured social order, expelling the maleficent, and undermining it, to deconstruct the figure of the detective as arbiter of knowledge and order, suggesting that the world, or a human being, is not open to interpretation, ordering, patterning; that there are limits to reason. Most American anti-detective films, however, are rather heavy-handed in their messages - 'The Parallax View' obscures itself in a dense murk, 'The Conversation' is full of European austerity and ellipsis. 'Night Moves', on the other hand, plays as a hard-boiled thriller, in the style of contemporaries like 'Chinatown' or 'Farewell My Lovely'. We have a rich Chandlerian brew of flawed, basically decent dicks, femmes fatales, wastrel rich with their errant offspring, and a satisfyingly convoluted plot. And 'Night Moves' can be enjoyed like this - Penn never makes deliberately 'arty' his material. The film also functions as a complex psychological piece, about a once-successful, popular athletic man reduced to peeping on cheating wives (first his clients, then his own). This is linked on the one hand to the decline of America (Harry's success and decline framed by the assassination of the Kennedy brothers), and to the family: Harry himself haunted by his own mysterious relations with his father, his marriage being notably childless, his quarry being a highly sexed teenager who's run away from a promiscuous mother to a smuggling father. The account of Harry's crumbling marriage and his personal regrets is as moving as his distaste or the paint-like qualities of Eric Rohmer is funny. But this generic realism, if you like, does not preclude more abstract elements such as the title, with its suggestions of chess, of a game where Harry isn't sure whether he's grandmaster or pawn, or to the playing out of the drama, where the most significant events, both in terms of the mystery and Harry's personal life take place at night, or the idea of the narrative as a dream. For instance, what is the connection between Harry's wife's job as a vendor of antiques, and the central smuggling crime? Is Harry transposing the failure of his domestic narrative onto his professional one, in the hope that by solving this he'll make good the first? Harry is being led by dark forces (within himself) beyond his control. The Florida Keys hideout of Delly's stepfather (where the first sequence has the time- and plot-suspending atmosphere of an enchanted realm) boasts a sign, '66', which suggest the famous route, one version of the American dream dashed in this film, or more sinister, diabolic, forces. For me, this masterpiece is all these things, but mostly it is a critique of the gaze, the power to see and interpret that is the raison d'etre of the detective, from which he derives his power and status. Harry's gaze is severely undermined throughout, by being misled, by personal blocks, by simply interpreting wrong. When the solution is revealed, it is certainly not any of Harry's doing - it is brought to him with bloody murderousness. Throughout the movie, we see Harry looking at people or things through blinds, curtains, screens etc., his view impaired. But it's more than this. In his wife's lover's house (is he blind? I thought he was until near the end - see, need to look harder!), there are trompe l'oeil effects in the windows which seem to transform and distort the visual field we look through. It's a small thing, but, like those little clues Nabokov scatters in his books, its reverberations and implications are potentially massive. This is linked to the cinema (Harry is seen by others through a screen-like frame) that makes up the plot's supposed background (remember, Harry discovered his wife's infidelity coming out of a movie theatre).

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• The Real Mystery Is Figuring Out That Some Likable People Do Bad Things

  JasonDanielBaker2014-03-05

  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.

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• Excellent Film Noir, Superbly acted and well directed

  Kar-21998-09-10

  Night Moves is an underrated Film Noir. Directed by Arthur Penn (Bonnie & Clyde) it is an absolutely outstanding genre piece. Gene Hackman plays an L.A. gumshoe who is hired by a well to do ex-actress to find and bring home her runaway daughter (Melanie Griffith in her first role!). What seems to be routine detective work soon turns out to be a complicated case which finally ends in murder and mayhem. There are some remarkable stunt and underwater sequences, well photographed by Bruce Surtees (Director of Photography of many Clint Eastwood action movies). Not only Melanie Griffith but also another of today's stars, James Woods, gave his screen debut in this film. See it, it is worth the while!

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• A Different and Complex Detective Story

  claudio_carvalho2010-10-02

  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.

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