Movie Type: Post-Noir (Modern Noir), Detective Film
Themes: Private Eyes, Runaways, Femmes Fatales
Main Cast: Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren, Edward Binns, Harris Yulin, Susan Clark
Release Year: 1975
Country: US
Run Time: 99 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Private eye Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is dedicated to his job, but his dedication does not make him happy or powerful in his personal life, and his wife (Susan Clark) is cheating on him. Aging actress Arlene Iverson (Janet Ward) hires Harry to find her trust-funded daughter Delly (Melanie Griffith), distracting Harry from his marital problems as he tracks the lascivious runaway teen to Florida. In the Keys, Harry has an affair of his own with Paula (Jennifer Warren), and he 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. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Review
Like Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973) and Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), Arthur Penn's Night Moves rethinks the conventions of 1940s film noir with a 1970s sensibility. In the noir world, the L.A. lifestyles of the rich and famous masked an amoral core over which the detective could momentarily assert his ethical power; in Penn's 1970s version (as in those of Altman and Polanski), the detective cannot even manage that small a victory. The noir shadows that swathe Harry Moseby's Florida trip in Night Moves only emphasize how little he can see of what is really happening; and even what action Harry (Gene Hackman) can see is blocked by clear water and glass barriers. Increasingly less receptive to films that delved into the unethical morass of contemporary America, the audience did not embrace Night Moves as earlier ones had Penn's previous revisionist genre movies, Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Little Big Man (1970). Still, the final image of this Penn outing indelibly sums up the quandary of a detective with some grasp of how to do the right thing, faced with a society that couldn't care less. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Kenneth Mars - Nick; Janet Ward - Arlene Iverson; James Woods - Quentin; Anthony Costello - Mary Ellman; John Crawford - Tom Iverson; Melanie Griffith - Delly Grastner; Ben Archibek - Charles; Rene Enriquez; Max Gail - Tony; Avril Gentles; Tim Haldeman - Delivery Boy; Shauna McCullough; Dennis Dugan - Boy; Louie Elias; Carey Loftin; John Moio - Cop; Victor Paul; Sandra Seacat; Michael Ebert
Credit
Gene Lasko - Associate Producer, Nessa Hyams - Casting, Rita Riggs - Costume Designer, Jack Roe - First Assistant Director, Arthur Penn - Director, Dede Allen - Editor, Stephen A. Rotter - Editor, Michael Small - Composer (Music Score), Bob Stein - Makeup, Roland "Ozzie" Smith - Camera Operator, George Jenkins - Production Designer, Bruce Surtees - Cinematographer, Robert M. Sherman - Producer, Ned Parsons - Set Designer, Joe Day - Special Effects, Marcel Vercoutere - Special Effects, Jack Solomon - Sound/Sound Designer, Richard Vorisek - Sound/Sound Designer, Alan Sharp - Screenwriter
An "anti-detective" thriller in the style of Vertigo and the television series The Rockford Files, the film stars Hackman as Harry Moseby, a retired professional football player working as a private investigator in Los Angeles. Moseby is hired by a former actress to find her runaway stepdaughter (Griffith). The case takes him to the Florida Keys and it soon becomes considerably more complicated and dangerous than it had originally seemed.
Plot summary
Private investigator Harry Moseby 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 Keys, Harry has an affair of his own with Paula, and he 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.
