Sunset Gun

Straight Jacket: Stark Raving Joan

When iconic horror auteur/B-movie producer/shock pioneer William Castle approached Miss Mildred Pierce/Oscar winner/sensitive shopgirl/demented diva Joan Crawford about his newest project, Strait-Jacket, he explained that, she, the star would play a woman in her Fifties. "Forties" was Joan's quick, curt response, even though in 1964, the larger-than-life part-woman, part-gargoyle (beautiful gargoyle) was a ripe 60. Fine, fine, fine. Castle conceded anything for Ms. Crawford.

A mean-spirited, yet surprisingly moving offshoot of superior psycho-hag masterpieces like Robert Aldrich's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Strait-Jacket (scripted by Psycho's Robert Bloch) was really a Crawford-approved vehicle, right down to the lighting (of course), the hiring, and the firing -- namely of her first co-star. As told in Battle-Ax: The Making of Strait-Jacket (included on the DVD), Crawford didn't take to the first luscious, young thing who played her daughter, and so had her swiftly (ahem) axed from the project. No one in the documentary says why Joan didn't get on with the woman exactly (though Peter Nellhaus wrote me that in Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story, actres Anne Helm claims she was fired for addressing Joan as, "Joan" and not  "Miss Crawford"), but possibly Miss Crawford wanted a statelier gal, hence the casting of the lovely Diane Baker (so arch eyed and naughty kittenish in Hitchcock's Marnie).

We also get a nice glimpse into the talented, vizard charisma that is Joan in the DVD's other special feature --  her fabulous costume and makeup tests. She's in full character, smoking sexily, believing, as every great actress should, that she is the hottest thing in high heels (and don't you forget about it). Smiling, smirking, swiveling that swimming/jogging/comet-cleansing bod in padded bra and pretty pumps, jangling her charm bracelet around all come-hither-boys, she reminds me of Bette Davis's Margaret Elliot from The Star -- no one's gonna tell her to play dumpy hausfrau. That decision didn't work out so well for Bette's Margaret (spectacularly so, The Star stands as one of Davis's finest performances of embarrassingly brutal honesty); but it did for Joan, even when screeching through a mental ward.

Particularly in later years, Crawford the star and Crawford the woman never wandered far from each other, making her alternately brilliant and terrifically terrifying. Stare at these tests and you'll knows that she's one of the most fascinating self-inventions ever to grace, or rather, claw her way across the silver screen. If you watch it numerous times (like I have), you just can't help but adore how wonderfully insane she seems. Whatever happened to actresses like Joan? They died off  --  torn away, like the old hat once resting atop the Brown Derby, dialed down like push button over rotary.

In the new, rather confused American cinema of the 60s, Strait-Jacket is the procession towards that funeral, and Joan as Lucy is poignant, scary, and yes, funny with her portrayal of a woman who, naturally, loses her mind after she finds her younger husband in bed with another girl. What to do? Grab an ax (yes, you'll think of Faye Dunaway yelling "Tina bring me the ax!") and hack the lovers to bloody hell while her young daughter looks on. Not the best idea, so she's then shoved into a mental institution (a screaming Joan is truly horrifying and sad) and is finally freed after a 20-year sentence. Upon release, she moves in with her brother, who in a sick irony not lost on St. Frances fans, is played by Leif Erickson (Frances Farmer's ex-husband. One wonders if any guilt drifted across his mind while reading the nutty script).

More importantly, her daughter (Baker), now a grown woman and sculptress,  re-unites with her tentative, insecure mother and helps her along the path of recovery. And her help is...interesting. She even gives Mama Joan a makeover to look exactly as she did when she hacked off her husband's head -- something that's just a little more than unhealthy. And then similar ax-murders begin popping up all over town. Hmm... No surprises will be given away here, but Strait-Jacket, though simple and crafted for shock, marks you deeper than you'd expect. As talented as William Castle is, that's all thanks to Ms. Crawford -- and he knew it.

Joan is just so...touching. I love Crawford (especially in pictures like The Unknown, Rain, The Women, A Woman's Face, Humoresque, Sudden Fear, Mildred Pierce, Autumn Leaves and all of her early flapper turned shopgirl roles, in which the harshness of her past, hard scrabble life resonates so poignantly), and even in such so-called exploitative fare, the actress is always excellent and fascinating to watch. In her transition from saucy lady to crazy broad to shy hausfrau to delusional sexpot (her weird come-on to her daughter's boyfriend is deliciously inappropriate while being strangely erotic), she's not as hammy as you'd think, encapsulating what it means to be Joan in one powerfhouse performance.

Aided by suspenseful pacing, an intriguing story and cheap-o, yet effective Castle effects, the picture is freaky sinister, moving and dream-like with its fake heads, blood-squirting necks and be-headings via lovingly manicured hands and strong arms bedecked with sparkling bracelets. It's not real imagery entirely (whatever that means), but real imagery that wakes you up from a nightmare -- like something Joan would dream while thinking of ways to off Jack Palance and Gloria Grahame in Sudden Fear (or perhaps rival Bette Davis and Franchot Tone in waking life). It's real, unreal, garish, aggressive and at times, strangely honest -- just like Joan. A messy house/mind made alarmingly perfect.

Motor Movie Meltdown, More Mean Meeker

Cars usually offer me solace, a place of escape.  Speeding microcosmic shelters where I can go, as the great Ike Turner wrote, “oozin’ and cruisin’ along.” But on a recent trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles, I did something that occasionally happens inside a car -- I freak out. My friend was driving along the 1, we stopped off in Big Sur and everything seemed fine. Beautiful stretch of highway, the sparkling ocean, the lovely curvy cliffs and…the dulcet tones of my irritated voice asking… “Can you speed this thing up just a little more?” My heart was beating a mile a minute, my hands were trembling -- I was entering a full scale level ten anxiety attack. For no reason.

With a little more thought and little less freak, maybe there was some reason. I wasn’t driving. I told my friend to pull over -- surrender the wheel. He complied but soon regretted this decision. Driving as fast as that stupid rental (I blame the rental) could take me, screeching around the high cliffs and stating over and over that police didn’t patrol out here anyway,  and I’m gonna pass any selfish slow-poke in front of me (how dare they enjoy the scenery, Christina!), I glanced at my friend who was as white as a sheet, bracing himself for dear life. He knew I was having a moment, and he didn't say anything lest I motor us off the cliff (but come on...I know how to drive a car). And yet, the nutty focus helped -- my rushing adrenaline became one with the accelerator -- if I couldn’t run this damn panic attack off, I was gonna drive it off.

But suddenly I thought -- what if Robert Loggia (Robert Loggia from Lost Highway) was rolling in front of me? I’m not one to tail gate, but god forbid two motorized mental meltdowns collide (if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m talking about). Which got me thinking further about something I’m always pondering -- movies -- specifically, movies in which characters suffer similar vehicular flip-outs. There are so many: Kirk Douglas going spectacularly speed demon nutzo in Two Weeks in Another Town, Lana losing her cool in The Bad and the Beautiful, Lana and John Garfield losing their nerve in The Postman Always Rings Twice, Alice enduring Tommy's endless joke in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Bette drunk driving with her Oscar atop the dash in The Star (drunk driving laws should be exempt if you're clutching an Oscar you won 15 years ago), Anthony Perkins scaring the hell out of Diana Ross (and taking Helmut Newton meets Weegee meets mental hygiene photos at the same time  -- in the car) in Mahogany,  Rip Torn chucking that woman out of his car, throwing money at her, then backing up and snatching the money right back in Payday, Max doing essentially, anything in Mad Max or Ann Savage and Tom Neal simply breathing behind the wheel in Detour -- movies can express motor-psycho moments perfectly. So with that (and among many others, there are too many to list all) here are five big screen freak-outs I especially love.

The Longest Yard (1974)

Robert Aldrich’s The Longest Yard contains one of cinema’s greatest opening sequences of supreme speed demon self destruction. Here’s how it goes: Washed up pro football player Paul "Wrecking" Crewe (Burt Reynolds) who was banished from the sport for point shaving, staggers out of bed with a woman whose clearly (and very loudly) keeping him. As Crewe reaches for a drink, she storms out of the bedroom hollering at him for being a loser, how she paid for his new teeth -- essentially emasculating ol’ Burt. In a move that would never, ever happen in a movie today, Crewe shoves her, he shoves her hard, and with the rage of a man who's ego's been bruised one too many times. And then he jumps into her fancy Citroen. Oh this is so great. Speeding down the street, with drink in hand and Lynyrd Skynrd tune blaring (no less), cops are in pursuit. But does he care? Nope. When he does stop the madness, he doesn’t turn himself in; he simply kicks the car into a watery grave. But that's just the half of it. Waltzing into a bar for more drinks -- he then casually insults the dispatched officers (to the delight of both the bartender and the cop escaping his barbs) and finally slugs the fuzz. A wonderfully hilarious, transgressive scene with Reynolds at the top of his dangerous cinematic charms, all this happens before the opening credits come to an end.

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

In the 1930s and 40s, Ida Lupino earned deserved esteem as an actress with her tough, sensitive performances in movies like High Sierra, They Drive by Night and Road House, and would continue her talents into the 1950s with The Big Knife, While the City Sleeps and On Dangerous Ground. But the intelligent, unique and creative actress spent time studying the mechanics behind the camera, resulting in her directorial debut, Outrage, in 1950, a thoughtful, emotional B-thriller that took on the controversial subject of rape. Throughout her career as a director (she made seven pictures), Lupino would continue to approach taboo subjects with sensitivity and grit (The Bigamist is another interesting standout), but her greatest film is the intriguing psychodrama and wonderful auto-terror, The Hitch-Hiker, starring Edmond O'Brien, Frank Lovejoy and a brilliant William Talman. Chronicling a horrifying road trip in which two fishermen (O'Brien and Lovejoy) pick up a completely deranged hitchhiker (Talman), Lupino directs with shadowy menace and intense nervousness (mirroring postwar anxiety -- especially in a car) in this tight character study/thriller that rivals the car insanity of Detour. Though she called herself the "Poor man's Don Siegel," she was dubbed the "Queen of the B's" and enjoyed a successful career (especially for a female director), making a string of entertaining, thought-provoking pictures that stand the test of time. Bigamists are fine, but hitch-hiking is always creepy.

Jeopardy (1953)

The John Sturges directed daylight noir thriller is not only a tense, daring ride, but a deliciously, devilishly, weirdly hot good time. Here's the predicament: While vacationing in Mexico with hubby Barry Sullivan (an actor I revere, and one I will discuss in an essay that needs to be written) and their young son, Stanywck is put to the test after Sullivan is trapped in the surf and she must find anyone (anyone) to help her. Aid arrives in smarmy Ralph Meeker (ohhhh...Meeker) a fugitive who has a few other things on his mind. He professes to help, grabs Babs, and takes charge of her car and off it goes. A lot of arguing, sexual tension, slaps, cracker eating, everything happens in that nutty car ride. And the repartee between Stanwyck and Meeker is angry, sick and erotic with standouts involving the triple slap Meeker lays on tough Babs (triple!) or Meeker’s proud preference for cheap perfume: “It doesn’t last as long.” Or my favorite moment  --  when Stanwyck realizes she must make the ultimate sacrifice. She stands near the car, faces Meeker all hard and seductive and says: “I’ll do anything for my husband. ANYTHING.” And she does. Hard-core Babs.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974)

Apologies up front for returning to this movie on, seemingly, a monthly basis. But I love it so. Sam Peckinpah's brilliantly bizarre, fantastically bloody yet strangely beautiful 1974 masterpiece, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah's most personal picture), is not only essential viewing for Peckinpah-philes, but required viewing for every gear-head whose endured a long, tumultuous road trip - chiefly through Mexico, and with a rotting head in the car (but I’m getting ahead of myself).  The picture stars one of my favorites, Warren Oates as Bennie, an American ex-pat/small-time hustler/piano player who claims to know where Garcia can be found. For various reasons I won’t get into, once involved, Bennie's up for a major dinero if he brings in Garcia -- dead. All he needs is the head.

Coincidentally Bennie's girlfriend (the great Isela Vega) was once Garcia's lover, and after informing Bennie that Garcia is already dead, he thinks, easy:  find the grave, dig up the corpse, chop off the noggin, cash in, and start anew. Well…not so easy. As the road trip progresses, Peckinpah’s realism churns into this existential hyper-real horror show that manages to be poetic, grisly and oddly romantic. When deranged avenger Bennie, be-decked in that glorious white suit (Warren Oates has never looked better), now covered in dirt, sweat and blood, drives with what will become something of a friend  -- the rotting, severed head of Alfredo Garcia -- the adventure spirals into violence, poignancy, and madness. Swatting the flies out of the car, and confiding thoughtful, sometimes angry diatribes to his newest buddy, that head becomes a body part he can trust– the one person he can actually relate to. Showing an auteur and actor at the height of brazen, violent eccentricity, the picture is highly personal and daringly touching. A movie I make sure to watch every Valentine’s Day. No, really, I do. I’ve even watched it in a car -- on Valentine’s Day. More on all that right here. 

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Another Robert Aldrich picture (another Meeker), but damn if the director didn’t have a way with characters going batty in their bucket seats -- and directly at picture start. With this seminal, sleazy noir Kiss Me Deadly, he opens the picture with a pair of naked feet running down the middle of a highway in the black of the night.  The feet belong to a hysterical, heavily panting blonde/psychiatric-ward escapee (Cloris Leachman) wearing only a trench-coat. Desperate for a ride, she places herself in the middle of the road and finally, a cool little Jaguar sports car comes to a screeching halt. The driver, Mike Hammer (the ultimate sexy shit-heel Ralph Meeker) is agitated by this mystery woman/potential loony, begrudgingly “rescuing” her with a sneer. He spits:  “You almost wrecked my car. Well? Get in!” With the camera placed behind our two characters (one absolutely frantic, the other as cool as a cucumber), the credits roll upside down against the highway’s white lines (so brilliant), and the only thing you hear is Nat King Cole’s elegant “Rather Have the Blues” co-mingling with woman’s hard, almost sexual sounding hyper-ventilating. So totally perverse and subversive, Aldrich’s kick start plays shocking even today.

How many pictures would have the balls to place a viewer on this kind of edge? But Aldrich’s not playing simply for shock -- the director (and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo) instantly address the expressionistic, off kilter and monstrous universe we’re about to enter -- but in a car. Un-relenting, sleazy, mean, disorienting, neurotic, psychotic and hopeless, Leachman’s panting pick-up is the crazed conscious inside all of the film’s characters, maniacally running from a world that could explode (literally) by the opening of a suitcase, or simply your car door.

Something Wild, Rare and Special

It’s not wild. But it's unforgettable.

I never understood the title of Jack Garfein’s beautiful, sad, confusingly romantic and richly empathetic Something Wild. If the title refers to the movie’s brutal rape, a wild animalistic act, it’s certainly nothing wild for the tragic protagonist, Mary Ann (played by a powerfully touching and brave Carroll Baker). Something dreadful is more apt, as she suffers the rough hands of a faceless brute, emerging from the trees like a demon spirit.

And her demise, repulsion, sickness, panic, alienation and finally, near-life-ending depression, isn’t worthy of wild either. Something despondent. She’s desperate to fling herself from her inner demons. She cannot discuss nor process the rape. She can’t even tell her parents. In a classic panic-stricken fight or flight scenario -- she flees from a crowded subway car, gasping for breath as commuters rub against every inch of her violated body. More and more, lovely Mary Ann turns into a withdrawn, clinically depressed, misunderstood woman -- a woman filled with terror and shame -- a woman who hates herself even if she did nothing wrong. A woman who was raped. This is how rape victims feel.

And rape is not something her potential savior/captor Mike (Ralph Meeker, who should have played more roles like this -- his range is extraordinary) can understand -- though in his own wordless way – he tries. He’s nothing wild either. A sad sack with a working class job, a dumpy demeanor (this is not smart alec Kiss Me Deadly Meeker) and a drinking problem, he’s not a healthy man, and not healthy towards women, but then…weirdly sympathetic. He wants this woman. He needs this woman. He needs her to save him.

The picture starts with the innocence of Mary Ann's name. Mary Ann exits off the subway and makes her way home, at night. This appears a usual walk for the woman, but something gives her a start. A rustle of trees, a paper cup blowing on the ground, a general feeling of unease. Her fear is well founded, as a large man, almost appearing like a monster, emerges from the trees, grabs the woman, and rapes her. And he appears to rape her for a long time – even tearing off the cross she wears on her neck. God is not on her side. This rape is not titillating. This rape is just sad and draining, and you feel like Mary Ann walked into a monstrous tree satyr.

The film continues for a good twenty minutes (or more, which seems unprecented for American movies at that time) without any dialogue, and we watch Mary Ann silently trudge her way home, where she bathes, scrubs, looks at the cuts on her body with horror, take all of her clothes and cut them into tiny pieces. She flushes the tattered garments down the toilet. And then she sleeps.

Since the rape has made it impossible for her to conduct herself in normal life, Mary Ann abandons home, unannounced, leaving her mother in a panic to find her. She gets a job where a bunch of judgmental/jealous women make fun of her, she takes a tiny, dumpy little NYC flat, where a bare light bulb offers her only illumination and a loud floozy (Jean Stapleton) cackles nearby. It seems Mary Ann can’t escape the depraved and the diseased – or perhaps, she’s throwing herself right into it – the belly of the best, so to speak. Repulsion meets The Tenant meets The Collector. And yet, Garfeien’s picture was made before any of these.

But that beast and that belly are not what she expected. After becoming so despondent, that she decides the best choice is to take her own life, she nearly jumps off the Manhattan Bridge. She would have accomplished her act of self-destruction if not for another beast (Meeker), who saves her from leaping.

And then, he keeps her. At first, one thinks, she needs to stay. After all, he’s looking out for her – she can’t attempt suicide again. But the movie veers into far more complex areas after he locks her in – for good. Since confinement, the act of being held down and forced to submit has plagued this poor woman for months; she reacts with anger and panic. And for good reason – he won’t ever let her leave. Like The Collector, he’s keeping his sad little butterfly – a butterfly without wings.

But why? These are questions the picture never easily answers. You understand that he is also a cheerless, lonely person, an alcoholic, and a man who needs this woman near him. In his own twisted way he loves her. When he stumbles home drunk and attempts to molest Mary Ann, she reacts violently and with self-preservation, poking out one of his eyes. Suddenly the film merges Beauty and the Beast with Greek Tragedy --  Mary Ann turns Mike into a Cyclops. The next morning, he claims to barely remember the evening, and seems nonchalant about the eye patch he now must wear. He reckons he may have gotten into some kind of fight. Or maybe he does remember. Maybe he respects Mary Ann for fighting back. We just don’t know. And then again, we oddly can’t hate him.

And so there they continue living in his basement hovel of an apartment, biding their days with his “romantic” meals and need to be near Mary Ann. Mary Ann remains adamant to leave, but she will soon soften. Is this a positive step? Is this a romantic reaction to her savior? Is this indeed, the only man she can now trust? Is this Stockholm syndrome? In any case, it’s all very sad.

The movie, released in 1961, an expressionistic/naturalistic work of art that also recalls Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, before Polanski’s film was made, and Bergman, was far ahead of its time in its European sensibilties (and yet, with its actors and setting, it feels wholly American). Garfein (then Baker’s husband), who survived the Holocaust, well understood the idea of entrapment and subjugation. I have seen few films that not only deal with rape in a sympathetic light (that’s not so hard), but deal with it as a kind of submersion into a subterranean world of dirty rooms and dreams – dreams, in one terrifying moment, where girls have no faces (Lars Von Trier would love this movie) – a world where trauma is expressed through the sounds of vulgar good-time girls, the oppressiveness of the subway, the simultaneous attraction and repulsion to men, work, the city, and sex. If anyone finds Mary Ann’s feelings and actions unrealistic, they have no concept of the odd co-mingling of unreality and harshness that an act of rape can make a woman feel. For anyone wanting to forget the memory -- repression and submersion is natural.

And it’s all very much like a movie you were likely to have never seen in 1961, or now, for that matter. Garfein based his movie on the novel Mary Ann (a better title I think), and enlisted some superior talents to give the movie an expressionistic, gritty, dream-like appeal. The great Aaron Copland provided the potent music; the legendary Saul Bass created the title sequence, and brilliant cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan worked as DP. Since Schüfftan lensed Lang's Metropolis, Carné's Port of Shadows, Gance's Napoléon and Franju's Eyes Without a Face (among many other accomplishments), the look of the picture is both grubby and dreamlike. It feels like trauma, it feels Jungian, dreamy, hyper real (with such wonderful location shooting). He seems to understand, visually, the horror and fairy tale nature of a victim floating above pain. Mary Ann wants to rid herself of anguish, she wants to float, and yet, she’s stuck in a basement.

Through his lens, Schüfftan both raises Mary Ann from her trauma, while keeping her firmly on the ground  -- like Thomas Hardy’s Tess of Tess the D’Urbervilles removing herself from rape by becoming diaphanous and floating above molester Alex huffing on top of her, Mary Ann keeps herself whisper light, and yet, stuck in the dirt.  She stays in that basement. It’s tragic, gorgeous, poetic, even mythic, how she lives in two realities, which makes the ending incredibly complex. Mary Ann stays with Mike. How should one feel about this? She’s damaged, she’s now pregnant, she’s in love and yet, she still looks heartbroken. The ending creates a false kind of happiness (intentional, I think) that sits in your soul with such sadness and complication that the movie will not leave you – after all these years, it’s never left me.

Rape is never easy to come to terms with, we know that. But rape isn’t always met with counselors and discussions and getting in touch with your feelings. Perhaps Mary Ann got in touch with Mike. Perhaps she did not. Whatever the case, poor Mary Ann. I hate her entrapment, and I hate that she feels she has nowhere to go, and yet, I pray Mike treats her sensitively. I feel wrong for this, but I want them to work out. This is a dream. Or a nightmare. I can only hope she’s truly happy one day. Not wild, but happy.

Something Wild, Something Rare

I'm late to my own movie watching party, but as they say, rather late than never...showing up.

So if you're awake, or DVR able, please watch my introduction and discussion of two of my favorite films -- Jack Garfein's beautiful, shocking, experimental, empathetic, wonderfully acted Something Wild (1961), starring Carroll Baker and Ralph Meeker, and John Berry's gritty, gripping, poignant film noir, complete with tragic blacklisted star (the great John Garfield, in his last role), writer (Dalton Trumbo) and director, He Ran All the Way (1951), starring Garfield and Shelley Winters. That's on TCM, 8:30 and 11:30 (PST).

Both movies are rare, both ahead of their time, both involve oddly sympathetic captors, both have never seen the light of DVD (in America) and both are masterpieces. I will write more about the films later and soon (there's so much to discuss concerning the pictures, from backstory to history to music to cinematography and more...and even more to discusss while on TCM, but time did not permit me to sit in that chair all day, though, I could have), but for now...watch them. Many thanks to Turner Classic Movies for the honor of guest programming during this month of Critic's Choice. And many thanks to Robert Osborne, a true gentleman and one of the smartest cineastes around.

Penn's Shadows & Light: Night Moves

Night Moves is a summer movie, but not a summer movie -- not in the traditional sense. It's a sun-soaked, sad, haunting, neo-noir.  It's a summer movie in that it plays out the way summer often really feels --  claustrophobic, oppressive, alienating with sunlight and heat, packed with an overabundance of free time -- free time to mull over your life with a certain kind of existential ennui. Is existential ennui possible? Yes. And it's certainly unleashed while watching Night Moves. The late Arthur Penn well understood this sensation, a man who knew that, even the free spirits weren't going to get out alive (Bonnie and Clyde), or that the hippies weren't just a group of easygoing simpletons (Alice's Restaurant), that Warren Beatty wasn't just a pretty face (Mickey One), and that all of this was indeed, quite tragicomic (Little Big Man). He got it. The director eased into the 1970s with both his eternally youthful questioning of authority intact, mixed with a seasoned wisdom and cynicism, beautifully and mournfully presented in this, one of his greatest pictures.

Though most 70s cineastes regard this movie (written by Alan Sharp) as a classic of the era, it’s a film that oddly, took far too long for rediscovery (and a DVD release). And this is a bit curious. The picture was directed by the auteur behind a movie largely responsible for kick-starting 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 most importantly, it stars a powerful Gene Hackman in one of his greatest, most poignant and naturally moody performances. A complex, thoughtful and potently (or impotently) melancholic detective story/character study, Night Moves is the kind of movie people are talking about when they praise 70s cinema. It's could be the movie.

Like Bill L. Norton's elegaic 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, again distinctly 70s -- 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.”) -- he's angry, but is lost inside of himself. Hackman plays this melancholia with subtlety and intelligence, giving his dread, both relatable and mysterious, 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 all in stride. Harry falls for the woman -- for her beauty, for her intelligence and for her seen-it-all sensibility that, combined with her sunny good looks, is quite disarming. A sexy blonde in a Newport cigarette ad come to angst ridden life, she's attractive because she's interesting -- there's just something off about her.

But as the plot thickens (and thickens some more) 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 -- a lot more interesting and complex for a fellow one might consider a "regular" man (there may not be such a thing as a "regular" man ). And yet, we never know quite what's stewing underneath his tough yet vulnerable veneer. The director's doggedness of not tying up the film's 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 literally goes round and round (if you’ve seen the movie, you know exactly what I’m talking about), making the picture's moral ambiguities open-ended, inscrutable and curiously, painfully elegant.

"Harry thinks if you call him Harry one more time he's gonna make you eat that cat." Rest in peace Arthur Penn.