Directed by Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde), Night Moves expertly emits an overwhelming sense of loneliness, despair and hopelessness among each of its trapped characters. Harry’s search for Delly takes him from Los Angeles to New Mexico and the Florida Keys. In addition, Harry has just discovered that his wife “Ellen” (Susan Clark) is having an affair. One side is just losing slower than the other.” An unfairly neglected “neo-noir” thriller full of post-Watergate era angst, Night Moves stars Gene Hackman as former pro football player and disillusioned private detective “Harry Moseby,” who gets much more than he bargained for when he is hired by washed-up, overbearing actress “Arlene Iverson” (Janet Ward) to help track down her free-spirited, promiscuous daughter “Delly” (Melanie Griffith, in her credited film debut). I look forward (if you will) to your doing the same for DREAM LOVER. Thanks so much for giving me a follow up mini-review of your first time seeing NIGHT MOVES. And of course, Jennifer Warren, such screen presence! I don't like him in many things either, but he can be an interesting actor sometimes. Glad to read that Gene Hackman is growing on you a bit. It always surprised me how much I enjoyed the film even when I didn't always understand what was going on. I wonder if a director more skilled in the intricacies of cinema storytelling could have told it in a way that didn't require multiple viewings (my mind leaps to Coppola and how he handles the sprawling saga of the Corleones, or perhaps Hitchcock with his understanding of minimalism). So impressed you made good on your promise to check this film out! There really is something so serpentine about NIGHT MOVE's plot. Gene Hackman as private eye Harry Moseby plays chess with himself (knight moves, anyone) during a stakeout Griffith makes quite an impression, and I distinctly remember wondering if this girl's helium voice would change when she grew up. A nymphet role of the sort she would play again in Paul Newman's The Drowning Pool (1975) and likely incite picket lines today. Seventeen-year-old Melanie Griffith, making her film debut, is cast as the sexually precocious daughter. The detective in question, Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman, who, like Karen Black, seemed to be in every film made in the '70s), is adrift, both personally and professionally, when hired by a fading movie actress to locate her runaway teenage daughter. The plot of Night Moves is ostensibly an update of the typical '40s film noir detective thriller, only with a post-Watergate deconstruction of the American hero myth thrown in. It was simply icing on the cake that Penn's solemn approach to the detective film genre so suited my post-adolescent self-seriousness. for the plot of Night Moves is a real puzzler that benefits from repeat viewings. I was thrilled Night Moves opened in the theater where I was employed, allowing me the opportunity to see it countless times (for free!). In the summer of 1975, I had just graduated high school and my summer job was ushering at a movie theater in San Francisco while waiting to start film school in the fall. In the case of Night Moves, an updated noir bathed in the same chic nihilism as Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974), the "significance" is there in abundance. Kubrick is great for icy misanthropy, and Woody Allen is ideal for.well, Woody Allen.Īrthur Penn ( Bonnie and Clyde) is a director whose name I so associate with serious themes and deep social commentary that even when he directs a simple little detective drama like Night Moves, it's difficult not to attach to it a profound, pithy significance that may not even be there. If I see a David Lean film, I expect sweeping spectacle If I see Bogdanovich, I expect film school redux. For some of us film fans, certain directors come with their own baggage.
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