| Night Moves | |
|---|---|
Cover art from 1992 videotape release |
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| Directed by | Arthur Penn |
| Produced by | Gene Lasko Robert M. Sherman |
| Written by | Alan Sharp |
| Starring | Gene Hackman Jennifer Warren Susan Clark Melanie Griffith |
| Music by | Michael Small |
| Cinematography | Bruce Surtees |
| Editing by | Dede Allen Stephen A. Rotter (co) |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | June 11, 1975 |
| Running time | 100 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Night Moves is a 1975 detective film directed by Arthur Penn. The film stars Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren and Susan Clark, and features very early career appearances by Melanie Griffith and James Woods.
Hackman was nominated for the BAFTA Award for his portrayal of Harry Moseby, a private investigator. The film has been called "a seminal modern noir work from the 1970s",[1] which refers to its relationship with the film noir tradition of detective films.
Although Night Moves was not considered particularly successful at the time of its release, it has attracted viewers and significant critical attention following its videotape and DVD releases.[2] Manohla Dargis described it recently as "the great, despairing Night Moves (1975), with Gene Hackman as a private detective who ends up circling the abyss, a no-exit comment on the post-1968, post-Watergate times."[3]
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Harry Moseby is a retired professional football player working as a private investigator in Los Angeles. He is dedicated to his job, but his dedication does not make him happy or powerful in his personal life, and his wife Ellen is unfaithful to him.
Aging actress Arlene Iverson hires Harry to find her trust-funded daughter Delly Grastner, distracting Harry from his marital problems as he tracks the lascivious runaway teen to Florida. In the Florida Keys, Harry has an affair of his own with Paula, and succeeds in locating Delly, even as he learns that finding her is only the beginning of a much larger case.
As the "accidental" deaths multiply, Harry discovers that everyone has his or her own motives and that he cannot do much to stem the tide of deep-seated depravity.
The most quoted line from Night Moves occurs when Moseby declines an invitation from his wife to see the movie My Night at Maud's: "I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kinda like watching paint dry."[4] The exchange from Night Moves was quoted in director Éric Rohmer's New York Times obituary in 2010.[5] Penn himself is an admirer of Rohmer's films;[6] Jim Emerson has written that, "Harry's remark, as scripted by Alan Sharp, is a brittle homophobic jab at a gay friend of his wife's."[7] Bruce Jackson has written an extended discussion of the role of My Night at Maud's (1970) in Night Moves; viewers familiar with the earlier film may recognize that its protagonist and Moseby have related opportunities for infidelity, but respond differently.[4]
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Gene Hackman | Harry Moseby |
| Jennifer Warren | Paula |
| Susan Clark | Ellen Moseby |
| Ed Binns | Joey Ziegler |
| Harris Yulin | Marty Heller |
| Kenneth Mars | Nick |
| Janet Ward | Arlene Iverson |
| James Woods | Quentin |
| Melanie Griffith | Delly Grastner |
| John Crawford | Tom Iverson |
| Anthony Costello | Marv Ellman |
| Dennis Dugan | Boy |
| Max Gail | Stud |
Night Moves continues to attract critical attention long after its release. Film critic Michael Sragow included the film in his 1990 review collection entitled Produced and Abandoned: The Best Films You've Never Seen.[8] Stephen Prince has written, "Penn directed a group of key pictures in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Alice's Restaurant (1969), Little Big Man (1970), Night Moves (1975)) that captured the verve of the counterculture, its subsequent collapse, and the ensuing despair of the post-Watergate era."[9] In his monograph, The Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman, Robert Kolker writes, "Night Moves was Penn's point of turning, his last carefully structured work, a strong and bitter film, whose bitterness emerges from an anxiety and from a loneliness that exists as a given, rather than a loneliness fought against, a fight that marks most of Penn's best work. Night Moves is a film of impotence and despair, and it marks the end of a cycle of films."[10] Dennis Schwartz characterizes the film as "a seminal modern noir work from the 1970s" and adds, "This is arguably the best film that Arthur Penn has ever done."[1] This remark is telling in the context of Penn's earlier film, Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which is now considered a classic by most critics.[11]
Night Moves has been classified by some critics as a "neo-noir" film, representing a further development of the film noir detective story.[12] Ronald Schwartz summarizes its role: "Harry Moseby is a man with limitations and weaknesses, a new dimension for detectives in the 1970s. Gone are the Philip Marlowes and tough-guy private investigators who have tremendous insight into crime and can triumph over criminals because they carry within them a code of honor. Harry cannot fathom what honor is, much less be subsumed by it."[13]
Night Moves is not considered to have been a commercial success at the time of its 1975 theatrical release.[2][14]
Night Moves was released in 1992 in the U.S. as a laserdisc[15] and as a VHS-format videotape.[16] In 2005, it was released as a DVD in the U.S. and Canada (region 1).[17] The DVD was favorably reviewed by Walter Chaw, who writes, "Shot through with grain and a certain, specific colour blanch I associate with the best movies from what I believe to be the best era in film history, Night Moves looks on Warner's DVD as good as it ever has, or, I daresay, should."[18]
A region 2 DVD was released in 2007.[19]
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