Review: Night Moves (1975)
“Night Moves” is, like Altman’s superb “The Long Goodbye”, an example of the existential detective picture that was briefly popular in the 1970s. This is the type of movie where the story, which normally in this genre is dominant and rigoruously thought out, plays sometimes startling second banana to the eccentricities of the main character, who is allowed to be more anxious and less sure of himself than his 1940s noir counter part. The hyper macho conventions of the genre are usually satirized or frowned upon.
All of that said, the 1970s movies have their conventions too, and, while I agree that its probably the richest decade in American cinema, it wasn’t nearly as free-wheeling and “truthful” as we tend to make it out to be. The 1970s just had a more entertaining, refreshing pack of myths to sell us. The detective in the 1970s noir may be more of a realistic man in the sense that he’s not as fearless and always loaded with a Raymond Chandler quip, but he’s still a pretty suave, sexy in an unconvential way pseudo-hipster. Elliot Gould may not be Humphrey Bogart, but he isn’t you either. If you ARE Elliot Gould, my apologies.
Gene Hackman’s Harry Moseby, the PI of “Night Moves” is much closer to you than Humphrey Bogart or Elliot Gould, and this is the film’s greatest asset. Moseby isn’t hip, and we never really see him act particularly tough. He’s a troubled middle aged guy with a middling profession and a wife (Susan Clark) who cheats on him because she resents his emotional vacancy. Tellingly, Moseby doesn’t even confront his wife when he finds out, he confronts the other guy, and the man, knowing this was coming, precedes to lecture Moseby on insecurities he’s had to hear about second hand from the wife: his absent father, his lapsed promise as an athelete, etc. The man even asks Moseby if he’s gonna hit him like Sam Spade.
I’m making “Night Moves” sound like a pretentious slog, but I’ve only discussed about the first fifteen minutes of the picture. Harry is offered a new case (obviously) and he soon becomes enmeshed in a mystery involving a promiscious teenager, Delilah (Melanie Griffith, in a funny, wry little performance) and several older men working on the periphery of the movie industry that Delilah knows through her mother, a faded actress that has put Harry on the case.
As interesting as Harry Moseby is, the case, and the various symbolic allusions to it (the title is a pun, and Harry is obsessed with a famous missed opportunity in a chess tournament) are not as interesting or as well developed. You will probably walk out of the picture confused, as the resolution comes out of nowhere and is stuffed into the last ten minutes. This is intentional though and characteristic of the anti-genre stance of the decade, and especially director Arthur Penn, who made one of the most anti-genre movies of all time with “Bonnie and Clyde”. “Night Moves” is told completely from Harry’s point of view, and the sudden convergence of several surprises at once is meant to put us in Harry’s bewildered shoes, it works, but it bewilders us right out of the movie, and while one respects the intention, it doesn’t totally pay off.
But “Night Moves’ is worth seeing for a lead character a little off the beaten path of noir films, and for Hackman’s wonderful performance as that character. The film also has a pair of beautiful, creepy death scenes near its conclusion, and some memorable, cranky, wannabe tough guy dialogue. Be sure to note the distinction between wannabe tough guy and tough guy, that’s the kind of movie you’re walking into with “Night Moves”.
- Bowen
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