REVIEW: Night Moves (1975)
A grimy neo-noir drenched in pessimism and loneliness...in a good way.
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THE STORY:
Football player-turned-private investigator Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) is hired by a former movie actress to track down her 16-year-old daughter, Delly (Melanie Griffith). His investigation leads him from Los Angeles to the stunt department of a desert movie set and eventually to the Florida Keys, where he finds Delly living under questionable circumstances with her stepfather and his new partner (Jennifer Warren). Along the way, he tails his unfaithful wife and starts to question the morality of his profession. Eventually, his conscience leads him to ask one too many questions about the Delly case.
THE BACKGROUND:
This film was made during one of the most tumultuous periods in American history. Watergate. The Vietnam War. The Civil Rights Movement. The Manson Murders. Assassinations. The directors of New Hollywood were young, angry, and cynical, and they took over the town of glitz and glamor like the proletariats storming the Bastille. Arthur Penn was a poster child of this movement, making movies about disillusionment and violence with an uncomfortable intimacy. Bonnie and Clyde is his most famous work, but Night Moves, which was released eight years later, is born of a similar rebelliousness, featuring a lingering sense of futility and loneliness rather than bloody catharsis and fevered romance.
It was scripted by Scottish novelist Alan Sharp, who came to Hollywood in the early ‘70s with a string of odd jobs and burned bridges under his belt in the hope of starting over as a screenwriter of Westerns and detective movies. Night Moves was his fifth feature, and it fared poorly at the box office despite the star power of its leading man. Faye Dunaway was set to costar in the film as Moseby’s wife in what would have been a re-teaming with Penn and Hackman after Bonnie and Clyde, but she dropped out to appear in Chinatown. If she had stayed in the movie, it may have generated more interest at the box office.
THE LETDOWNS:
There is no getting around the elephant in the room. The runaway, played by Melanie Griffith, is 16 years old but is characterized almost exclusively by her sexuality. Moseby questions a list of men during his search for her, all of whom casually allude to Delly’s assertive-bordering-on-aggressive promiscuity. It’s implied that she is sleeping with her stepfather, a man who looks to be over 50. When she meets Moseby, she spends most of her time taking off her clothes. “That’s Delly for you,” is the winking subtext in all these scenes. It’s hard to believe that, even in the 1970s, this type of storyline was considered merely provocative. (The release of the movie did have to be postponed for almost two years because Griffith was only 16 at the time her underwater nude scenes were filmed). Fortunately, whenever the focus shifts to Delly herself rather than other people’s impressions of her, the script and Griffith’s performance beam new dimensions into the character.
Specific characters aside, there is a pervasive sense that pieces of this film are missing. It might be intentional – a sort of minimalist storytelling technique in which the viewer is compelled not only to assume the motivations and backstories of certain characters but to imagine whole conversations and plot points that are never even alluded to. A less charitable and probably more accurate assumption is that there were multiple deleted scenes that should have been left in.
THE HIGHLIGHTS:
It’s unusual to get three memorable female characters in one movie, especially in the 1970s, but Night Moves pulls it off. Each of them – Griffith as Delly; Janet Ward as her self-involved, world-hardened mother; and especially Jennifer Warren as Moseby’s romantic interest Paula – are distinct and messy, with lives and personalities that spill out beyond the margins of Moseby’s interactions with them. This is the main way in which Night Moves improves upon the classic noir genre, which almost always leans on the trope of the femme fatale, a sexually liberated con-woman whose sole function in the plot is to lure the protagonist to his peril. The female characters in Night Moves are no more dangerous or virtuous than anyone else, and each has built a cage around herself, just like Moseby.
For a mystery, Night Moves is light on suspense, which may account, in part, for why it did so poorly at the box office. But this makes the characters and the mood paramount. Hackman is perfectly cast. As Moseby, he is quietly despairing, a man who ignores the emotional toll of his work until he can’t anymore. Full of quiet hopelessness, he is an indifferent private eye who ultimately cannot escape his conscience. The settings are grimy, sweaty, and stifling. During the only sex scene, the camera zooms into hyper close-up, lingering on hands and fabric. The final scene makes the movie worth the price of admission. There isn’t much air in the plot to begin with, which allows the ending to be poetic rather than explosive. Set partially underwater, the cinematography is breathtaking, the final frame a visual thesis.
THE VERDICT:
Night Moves is a melancholy thriller that is more mood than mystery. Hackman brings soulful despair to the private eye, and despite the initial discomfort brought on by Melanie Griffith’s character, it’s more than worth a watch. And probably worth several.
THE NEXT INSTALLMENT OF MOVIES IN THE MIDDLE IS…
Last Night in Soho (2021)
IMDb description: “Aspiring fashion designer Eloise is mysteriously able to return to 1960s London, where she encounters dazzling wannabe singer Sandie. But the glamour is not as it seems, and the dreams of the past crack and splinter into something darker.” Director: Edgar Wright; starring: Thomasin McKenzie and Anya Taylor-Joy.
A stellar cast, a director who rarely puts a foot wrong. Why on earth was this movie 107th at the global box office?
WHERE TO WATCH: Free on Amazon Prime! Rentable everywhere else.
Review dropping September 5th. See you then!
This is superbly written. What a pleasant read! I will be checking it out. Thank you for one more amazing review.
You nailed this one. Another highlight for me was the snappy dialogue. Witty, but dark and introspective like the film: [about a football game]'Who's winning?', Harry, 'Nobody. One side is just losing slower than the other' AND - Paula, 'I'm convalescing'. Harry, 'from what?' Paula, 'a terrible childhood'.