Night Moves (1975 film)
Encyclopedia
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", 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. 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."
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.
: "I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kinda like watching paint dry." The exchange from Night Moves was quoted in director Éric Rohmer
's New York Times obituary in 2010. Penn himself is an admirer of Rohmer's films; 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." 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.
included the film in his 1990 review collection entitled Produced and Abandoned: The Best Films You've Never Seen. 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." 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." 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." 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.
Night Moves has been classified by some critics as a "neo-noir
" film, representing a further development of the film noir
detective story. 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."
Night Moves was released in 1992 in the U.S. as a laserdisc and as a VHS-format videotape. In 2005, it was released as a DVD in the U.S. and Canada (region 1). 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."
A region 2 DVD was released in 2007.
Arthur Penn
Arthur Hiller Penn was an American film director and producer with a career as a theater director as well. Penn amassed a critically acclaimed body of work throughout the 1960s and 1970s.-Early years:...
. The film stars Gene Hackman
Gene Hackman
Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman is an American actor and novelist.Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde...
, Jennifer Warren
Jennifer Warren
Jennifer Warren is an American actress and film director.Warren was born in the Greenwich Village section of New York City, the daughter of Paula Bauersmith, an actress, and Barnet M. Warren, a dentist. Her uncle was Yiddish theatre actor and director Jacob Ben-Ami. Warren graduated from Elisabeth...
and Susan Clark
Susan Clark
Susan Clark is a Canadian actress, possibly best-known for her role as Katherine on the American television sitcom Webster, on which she appeared with her husband, Alex Karras.-Personal life:...
, and features very early career appearances by Melanie Griffith
Melanie Griffith
Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl...
and James Woods
James Woods
James Howard Woods is an American film, stage and television actor. Woods is known for starring in critically acclaimed films such as Once Upon a Time in America, Salvador, Nixon, Ghosts of Mississippi, Casino, and in the television legal drama Shark. He has won three Emmy Awards, and has gained...
.
Hackman was nominated for the BAFTA Award
BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
Best Actor in a Leading Role is a British Academy Film award presented annually by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding leading performance in a film.-Superlatives:...
for his portrayal of Harry Moseby, a private investigator. The film has been called "a seminal modern noir work from the 1970s", which refers to its relationship with the film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
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. Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and...
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."
Plot summary
Harry Moseby is a retired professional footballAmerican football
American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...
player working as a private investigator
Private investigator
A private investigator , private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases. Many work for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims...
in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. 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
Florida Keys
The Florida Keys are a coral archipelago in southeast United States. They begin at the southeastern tip of the Florida peninsula, about south of Miami, and extend in a gentle arc south-southwest and then westward to Key West, the westernmost of the inhabited islands, and on to the uninhabited Dry...
, 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.
My Night at Maud's
The most quoted line from Night Moves occurs when Moseby declines an invitation from his wife to see the movie My Night at Maud'sMy Night at Maud's
My Night at Maud's is a 1969 French drama film by Éric Rohmer. It is the third film in the series of the Six Moral Tales.- Plot :The Catholic Jean-Louis, , runs into an old friend, the Marxist Vidal , in Clermont-Ferrand around Christmas...
: "I saw a Rohmer film once. It was kinda like watching paint dry." The exchange from Night Moves was quoted in director Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer
Éric Rohmer was a French film director, film critic, journalist, novelist, screenwriter and teacher. A figure in the post-war New Wave cinema, he was a former editor of Cahiers du cinéma....
's New York Times obituary in 2010. Penn himself is an admirer of Rohmer's films; 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." 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.
Main cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Gene Hackman Gene Hackman Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman is an American actor and novelist.Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde... |
Harry Moseby |
| Jennifer Warren Jennifer Warren Jennifer Warren is an American actress and film director.Warren was born in the Greenwich Village section of New York City, the daughter of Paula Bauersmith, an actress, and Barnet M. Warren, a dentist. Her uncle was Yiddish theatre actor and director Jacob Ben-Ami. Warren graduated from Elisabeth... |
Paula |
| Susan Clark Susan Clark Susan Clark is a Canadian actress, possibly best-known for her role as Katherine on the American television sitcom Webster, on which she appeared with her husband, Alex Karras.-Personal life:... |
Ellen Moseby |
| Ed Binns Ed Binns Edward Binns was a stage, film, and television actor.Binns was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After appearing in a number of Broadway plays, Binns began appearing in films in the early 1950s... |
Joey Ziegler |
| Harris Yulin Harris Yulin Harris Yulin is an American actor who has appeared in dozens of Hollywood and television films.-Life and career:Yulin was born in... |
Marty Heller |
| Kenneth Mars Kenneth Mars Kenneth Mars was an American television, movie, and voice actor. He may be best-remembered for his roles in several Mel Brooks films: the insane Nazi playwright Franz Liebkind in 1968's The Producers, and the relentless Police Inspector Hans Wilhelm Fredrich Kemp in 1974's Young Frankenstein... |
Nick |
| Janet Ward | Arlene Iverson |
| James Woods James Woods James Howard Woods is an American film, stage and television actor. Woods is known for starring in critically acclaimed films such as Once Upon a Time in America, Salvador, Nixon, Ghosts of Mississippi, Casino, and in the television legal drama Shark. He has won three Emmy Awards, and has gained... |
Quentin |
| Melanie Griffith Melanie Griffith Melanie Richards Griffith is an American actress. She is an Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner for her performance in the 1988 film Working Girl... |
Delly Grastner |
| John Crawford John Crawford (actor) John Crawford was an American actor.Crawford was born Cleve Allen Richardson in Colfax, Washington. In films from the 1940s, Crawford appeared in bit parts for many years before playing leads in several films in the UK in the late 1950s and early 1960s... |
Tom Iverson |
| Anthony Costello | Marv Ellman |
| Dennis Dugan Dennis Dugan Dennis Dugan is an American director, comedian, and actor. He is most famous for his partnership with comedic actor Adam Sandler, with whom he directed the films Happy Gilmore, Big Daddy, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, Grown Ups, Just Go With It, and Jack and... |
Boy |
| Max Gail Max Gail Maxwell Trowbridge "Max" Gail, Jr. is an American actor who has starred in stage, television, and film roles. He most notably portrayed the role of Detective Stan "Wojo" Wojciehowicz on the television sitcom Barney Miller.... |
Stud |
Critical response
Night Moves continues to attract critical attention long after its release. Film critic Michael SragowMichael Sragow
Michael Sragow is a film critic and columnist who has written for The Baltimore Sun, The New Times, The New Yorker , The Atlantic and salon.com...
included the film in his 1990 review collection entitled Produced and Abandoned: The Best Films You've Never Seen. 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." 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." 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." This remark is telling in the context of Penn's earlier film, Bonnie and Clyde
Bonnie and Clyde (film)
The film was originally offered to François Truffaut, the best-known director of the New Wave movement, who made contributions to the script. He passed on the project to make Fahrenheit 451. The producers approached Jean-Luc Godard next...
(1967), which is now considered a classic by most critics.
Night Moves has been classified by some critics as a "neo-noir
Neo-noir
Neo-noir is a style often seen in modern motion pictures and other forms that prominently utilize elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements or media that were absent in films noir of the 1940s and 1950s.-History:The term Film Noir was coined by...
" film, representing a further development of the film noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
detective story. 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."
Box office and home media
Night Moves is not considered to have been a commercial success at the time of its 1975 theatrical release.Night Moves was released in 1992 in the U.S. as a laserdisc and as a VHS-format videotape. In 2005, it was released as a DVD in the U.S. and Canada (region 1). 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."
A region 2 DVD was released in 2007.