Because it’s summer and summer isn’t always happy days, beach frolics and picnics in the park. It's also, often, claustrophobic sunlight and heat, free time to overthink your life (or no free time to think at all), annoying, chipper people playing volleyball or worse, frisbee and my favorite, existential meltdown. But before you think I'm getting way too dramatic here, trust that summer can roll along like (and metaphorically speaking) one of my favorite movies, Arthur Penn’s Night Moves. (Which I'm revisiting here from a post last year -- it's been a shitty month...this movie's perfect for shitty months.)
Though most '70s film fans regard this picture as a classic of the era, it’s a movie that oddly, took far too long for rediscovery (and a DVD release -- finally three years ago, but I’m still keeping my worn VHS copy, for sentimental reasons). But this is a bit curious. The picture was directed by Arthur Penn, the auteur behind a movie that arguably kick-started the changing face of cinema--Bonnie and Clyde. It features both a teenage Melanie Griffith (in all her wild child glory) and a very young James Woods. And it stars my beloved Gene Hackman in one of his greatest, most poignant and naturally moody performances. It's also a brilliant movie, a complex, thoughtful and powerfully melancholic neo-noir. 
Like Bill L. Norton's masterful Cisco Pike, Jerry Schatzberg's moving Scarecrow and Michael Ritchie's great, tough Prime Cut (the latter two also featuring Hackman) Night Moves (1975) is a distinctly '70s picture, a movie that showcases exactly why so many consider that era a golden period of filmmaking. Hackman plays Harry Moseby, a private detective and former pro football player whose glory days are behind him (one of the picture's most touching moments is simply catching Harry beam while walking into a football stadium). His marriage isn't working out, his wife (Susan Clark) is having an affair (she also likes going to Eric Rohmer films, something Harry famously says is like “watching paint dry.”), and he seems somewhat lost. Hackman plays this melancholia with subtlety and intelligence and his existential dread hangs over the picture with an almost bittersweet pessimism.
Hired by a washed up Hollywood glamour-puss (Janet Ward) to find her teenage daughter (the nubile Griffith), Moseby takes the job and tracks down the girl who is crashing with her stepfather (John Crawford) in the Florida Keys. The unusual relationship sees the rebellious daughter in an extremely permissive and disturbingly close situation with her father whose mistress (Jennifer Warren) seems to coolly take it in some kind of stride. Harry falls for the woman, who's unusual herself, with an intelligence and seen-it-all veneer and, yet, interestingly sunny good looks that catches the viewer somewhat off guard. She’s a blonde healthy woman who looks like she smokes about two packs a day—she's got angst, but keeps it in cynical check. In short, she's a mysterious female character one rarely experiences in movies. She's truly interesting and off.
But as the plot thickens (and boy does it thicken) we realize just how interesting and off everyone and everything is, how very real to life they are. And with this, everyone and everything is not surprisingly, frustratingly impossible to crack. A revelation does not necessarily lead to closure because a revelation isn't always what it seems in the first place. And then there's Moseby's own mysteries which are really, a lot more interesting and complex. This doggedness of not tying up its mysteries in one tidy bow makes Penn's Night Moves all the more meaningful, its pessimism (and amidst all the oppressive sunlight) all the more complicated. Cruising in this beautiful "paradise" Hackman's boat doesn't crash, it goes round and round (if you’ve seen the movie, you know exactly what I’m talking about), literally making the picture's moral ambiguities open ended and curiously, painfully elegant.
And again, that boat. In any kind of existential crisis, I often think of Gene Hackman and that damn boat. I don't know if it helps me, but it's nice to relate to, even if that boat only exists in one's mind.
I need to revisit this, although I've never watched the whole thing. For me, Hackman's like Duvall, watchable in just about anything.
Posted by: chris | July 15, 2008 at 07:55 AM
Gene Hackman is about the only actor who gets me to watch any movie he is in (except maybe that one he did with Dan Ackroyd.)
Posted by: COOP | July 15, 2008 at 10:06 AM
Saw this movie a few years ago on 16mm (at a Noir film club a friend runs once a month) and was surprised that I hadn't heard of it before. Very 70s, with characters that just kept surprising you with each new development. Hackman is great, and I never knew Melanie was ever so young!
Cheers for the memories (from a chilly Down Under!)
Posted by: Wellington Sludge | July 15, 2008 at 09:16 PM
'Night Moves' is a creepy, understated classic. It approaches its characters with a refreshing ambiguity that you just don't see much of in cinema after, oh, 'Star Wars' came along. '70s neo-noirs are something special... this, and 'The Driver' (not as good a film but still a great ride down some dark alleyways in great period pantsuits) are among some of the more intriguing films from those years. Thanks for the great article, Kim!
Posted by: Terry | July 16, 2008 at 01:18 AM
it's kizmit that you published a post about 'night moves' just now... i'd ordered the dvd and just watched it for the first time last night. my finally getting around to picking up this movie is due to finally figuring out who harry moseby is... from jermey ritchie's great harry moseby confidential site, though i remember this movie coming out when i was a little kid. i saw clips on a canadian tv show about movies called 'claire olsen's movie beat' or something like that. from this show, i remember a panicky melanie griffith (though i had no idea who she was at the time), gene hackman, and a helluva lot of water. it looked cool and interesting... and over my head at the time. watching the movie last night, i wondered why it'd taken me so long to see it. along with 'two lane black top' this is one of my great recent discoveries from that most excellent era of filmmaking --- the 70's.
Posted by: daves | July 16, 2008 at 05:53 AM
I had seen Night Moves years ago on VHS and really enjoyed it, and wondered why it was so obscure. Then after the DVD release, it has become one of my very favorite films. I turn to it all the time. Hackman is just fantastic and Jennifer Warren brings so much to that character. She was good in Slapshot too, but really isn't in too much else, sadly.
Posted by: Matt Blankman | July 16, 2008 at 07:16 AM
I guess you could say I am a fan. I recently named this as my favorite American film from the seventies at Moon In the Gutter and have a side-project seventies blog named after Harry Moseby.
I first saw it as a teenager back in the late eighties (and like you I have held on to my VHS copy) and I just fell in love with it. It's one of those films that I just never tire of and I find myself thinking of it often in my daily life.
That music (I hear the master tapes are lost which is why there isn't a soundtrack), that performance, that ending...I think it's a perfect film.
“He played something else and he lost. He must have regretted it every day of his life. I know I would have. As a matter of fact I do regret it, and I wasn't even born yet.”
I love this film so damn much...
Posted by: Jeremy | July 16, 2008 at 07:31 AM
Talk about being haunted by this film... I feel like I've been possessed by it since I first saw back in '75. Hackman and Penn were a fine actor/director team with this, BONNIE & CLYDE and even the underrated TARGET. But the effect of NIGHT MOVES just continues to linger, thanks also to that subtly complex Alan Sharp script, chock-a-block with memorable dialogue and quotable lines. "Harry thinks if you can call him Harry again, he's going to make you eat that cat." Then, referring to the nymphy Melanie Griffith "How do you resist her?"
"I just think really clean thoughts...like Thanksgiving..."
I could see how Hackman's character could have married Susan Clark,an actress who really seemed to smolder in unexpected ways. And hey, what other film can say features a great performance by Edward Binns? But NIGHT MOVES is actually owned by the extraordinary Jennifer Warren who belongs not only in the Noir Hall of Fame but in my dreams forever.
Posted by: Scott Cherney | July 19, 2008 at 01:21 PM
Having been an enthusiast of "Night MOves" since its release, I feel grateful someone remebers it. I'd say it's one of the great American films since the '70s...
Miguel Marías
Posted by: Miguel Marías | July 20, 2008 at 03:42 PM
"Like Bill L. Norton's masterful Cisco Pike, Jerry Schatzberg's moving Scarecrow and Michael Ritchie's great, tough Prime Cut (the latter two also featuring Hackman)..."
Hey -- _all three_ films feature Hackman!
Posted by: Griff | July 24, 2008 at 10:15 AM
I love night movies. Great sleep care.
Posted by: celebrity movie archive | November 28, 2009 at 05:51 AM