Night Moves: The Florida Connection

Movies
1

I’m so glad madkevin mentioned Night Moves, a 70s detective movie directed by Arthur Penn and starring Gene Hackman, because I didn’t know it was on Netflix instant view. I just rewatched it. Man, this one really holds up.

I think it gets less attention because it was released in 1975, and directly followed Hackman’s performances in French Connection (1971) and then The Conversation (1973), and it was concurrent with his famous and slightly overwrought heroin withdrawal scenes in French Connection II . And while he’s good in Night Moves, it’s not as character driven as any of those movies. Night Moves is much more of a plot-driven detective story, not unlike Chinatown, but way messier, spanning marital strife, Hollywood, a teen runaway, some seemingly random detours out into the Florida keys, a couple of ball games, and a marked lack of urgency. In fact, the lack of urgency is what makes Night Moves special. There is no deadline. There are no menacing thugs. The mob doesn’t get involved. Harry Moseby never has to go on the lam, or clear his name, or shoot his way out of a jam. Night Moves has a very weird sense of pacing. When Moseby solves the case, he decides to just hang out for a while. This is the kind of script that no one would make these days, because you could argue that not much happens.

What drives Night Moves instead of an urgent plot about missing gold or hidden uranium or microfiche files is the lead character’s relationship with three women, each with her own powerful and distinct sense of sexuality. It’s a fascinating contrast to Arthur Penn’s earlier Bonnie & Clyde, which had strong undertones of frustrated sexuality. Night Moves is all about overt sexuality, and it lets it all hang out. In fact, by the time Gene Hackman has to utter the phrase “erect nipples”, it’s almost not ridiculous!

Madkevin points out that the ending pushes Night Moves into existential territory on par with The Conversation, and I fully agree, although the basic events are almost boilerplate detective noir. But the particulars, and the execution, and the way it’s played out as an action set piece in a movie entirely missing action set pieces! What a sucker punch. What a fantastic payoff.

I don’t want to give anything away, but this was the part of Night Moves that really lodged itself in my brain when I was a kid and I caught this movie on cable. Next to the raw 70s sexuality (My god, it’s full of breasts!), it tapped into the corner of my brain that couldn’t get Jaws out of my mind.

SPOILERS, BUT PHRASED IN A WAY THAT WILL BE VAGUE AND CONFUSING AND WILL HOPEFULLY MAKE YOU WANT TO SEE THE MOVIE IF YOU DON’T ALREADY:

The reveal of the McGuffin is so utterly unique, rising as it does from the depths like Cthulhu, setting in motion a chain of events that send Harry Moseby into a doomed spiral, alone and peering down into a window on the abyss through which he has glimpsed the union of sex, death, and betrayal. What the…? It’s a fucking genius ending.

SPOILERS OVER

Also, huge props for the movie resisting the obvious temptation to call itself Knight Moves, because that’s what it would be called if it were made today.

 -Tom
2

I have nothing to add to Tom’s fantastic write-up of this, except two things:

It’s tempting to talk about the ending too much because it’s just that good. It’s not simply satisfying on a story or thematic level, but also manages to provide one of the greatest visual metaphors for the malaise of post-Watergate America I have ever seen. But however great the ending is, it’s definitely not one of those flicks that’s only worth watching for the ending. The whole thing is great. The Chinatown comparison is apt.

Second thing: I’ve heard that Eric Rohmer line* a million times before but had absolutely no idea where it was from. I love it when stuff like that surprises me.

  • At one point, Hackman’s wife asks him if he wants to go to a Rohmer movie and he says “I saw a Eric Rohmer film once. It was like watching paint dry.”
3

Oh hey, there’s a thread about Night Moves! In an effort to brush up on my 70s cinema, I watched this a week ago or so.

I also just re-watched Chinatown this weekend. Which I probably shouldn’t have done, because while Night Moves is excellent, it just can’t compete. And now that Chinatown is sitting so freshly in my mind it’s hard to avoid drawing comparisons between them. In addition to the other awesome Hackman films Tom mentioned, I think the release of Chinatown only a year before caused Night Moves to lose some esteem in people’s eyes. Chinatown is just that awesome, it eclipses everything else.

I think one of the key differences between the two films is how a traditional noire trope is used: The way the P.I investigates the problems of others in order to hide / run from problems of his own. In Chinatown, Jake has experienced some sort of unspecified tragedy in his past. It’s what caused him to quit the police force, to stay away from Chinatown. It turned him bitter and cynical and forces him to hold people at a distance. He doesn’t want to talk about it, and we never really find out what it was, other than he’s filled with guilt about it. It’s mostly just character background, but you can feel it in every scene, buzzing just beneath the surface.

But in Night Moves, this trope is made totally explicit. Harry isn’t motivated by guilt. He doesn’t have some hidden pain that drives him to help people. He’s basically a shlub who meanders through life without really confronting anything. He literally runs from his problems, not just in thought but in action, all throughout this movie. He just wants to drift, to take the “safe” path whenever he can, without thinking too hard. I think at one point, after he’s tracked down Delly and can conceivably head back to L.A., he decides to stay in Florida and kind of mutters to himself: “Well who’s in such a hurry to get back anyway”. Because he doesn’t want to deal with his crumbling marriage, he’d rather put his life on hold and “see what happens” with Paula.

I’m not saying this like it’s a bad thing. Once you realize that this is what Night Moves is going for, it becomes really interesting. And the ending really works. My favourite image from this movie is that final scene of Harry pounding on the floor of the boat in pain, rage and frustration. How did it come to this? How did things go so wrong? Maybe if you had paid more attention, Harry.

Can I also say that I loved what Jennifer Warren was doing as Paula? If this is the seventies’ version of a Femme Fatale, I wish more noires had been made in the seventies. She’s beautiful, but in a really quirky way. I love the way the film treats her sexuality so differently from Delly’s. I love the little impressions she does. I love her unpredictability, which works beautifully with Harry’s aimlessness. Like when she asks Harry where he was when Kennedy was shot. He tells her and then asks her why she wants to know. She responds: “Oh, I dunno; it’s the one question everybody knows the answer to.” Oh snap! That’s what you get for opening up, Harry. I wonder how that line played in 1975, when Kennedy’s assassination was as recent to audiences as 9/11 is to us today.

If there’s one thing I would change about Night Moves it would be the score. Okay two things; the score, and a nicer film stock…I thought at times the picture looked a bit grubby. But oh man, that music! It was so intrusive and inappropriate. I thank God Arthur Penn left the climax silent, because there were so many scenes where that damn saxophone felt out of place to me.

Otherwise, I really enjoyed Night Moves. Really great. As unfair as it is to say though, It’s no Chinatown.

4

Oh, god, I think I remember the score. Was it a very made-for-TV kind of thing? Yeah, I’d rather not remember that. Too bad not every movie can be as perfect as Chinatown…

But, really, it’s kind of an unfair comparison. Chinatown and Night Moves are so different in terms of tone, theme, subject matter, lead character, casts, setting, and so forth. I’d say about the only thing they have in common are that the lead characters are detectives.

 -Tom
5

SPOILERS.

REALLY. STOP READING!

What the fuck, Tom? I’m seriously bumming. The ending is fucking heart-wrenching if you are a middle-aged man with intimacy problems. Bleeding to death, sailing in circles. Hurray for fucking metaphors, Penn. And the betrayal of seeing his buddy, Joey, in the plane. God, it doesn’t even make any sense and it’s tearing me up.

On the plus side, female leads fucking ruled in the 70’s. Susan Clark and Jennifer Warren both looked awesome. What happened to all the tall, leggy goddesses with quirky good looks, Hollywood?

Edit: Oh yeah, sinnick is right, the score blew.

“There ought to be a law against it”

“There is”

6

Repeating myself a bit from the Brick thread, but Josiah Thompson, philosophy professor turned actual detective cites Night Moves as the most accurate for depicting actual private detective process.

Glad to hear it’s on netflix so I can check it out.

7

While I’ve not seen this film, it’s interesting that a Penn film would come up as I was thinking about Little Big Man the other day. For a director of relatively few films, a pretty high percentage of what he did are classics.

8

I wouldn’t say I found the ending heart-wrenching. I was exhilarated by the awesome action, and the courage to end on such a black note.

But yeah, about Joey being in the plane. Does it make sense? I’ve only watched the movie once, but I assumed that when that dude turned up in the plane that I had just missed some important foreshadowing or something.

Is there a canonical explanation for what that guy was doing? I realize that it’s supposed to be vague and ambiguous (Especially when you think about how he was able to fire a machine gun and fly the plane with only one arm), but it sort of came out of nowhere for me.

9

Spoilers ahoy!

There’s obviously some kind of stunt man mafia thing going on. And the betrayal by your good friend is such a common theme in Hammett that I feel stupid for not seeing it coming. But I don’t get Delly’s death. Was it just an accident? Did Joey pull a Death Proof? Or, and this is my favorite, did Quentin cut the brakes and Joey covered for him and then had him killed. I kind of love how the movie refuses to spell it out for you. That it is so fucking noir.

And I think Knight Moves would have been an awesome title. I’m kinda pissed they didn’t have some sort of visual chess riff at the end. I want him to pound a check patterned seat cushion as he rages after failing to straighten out the boat.

10

No kidding. I really dug the movie, and that bleak climax is amazing, but when that hideous elevator music started playing over the very last shot, I felt like screaming. Way to ruin the mood, Arthur.

Edit:

SPOILERS

Also, I wasn’t completely floored by Joey’s appearance – I suspected there had to be more to him since this is a noir and all, even if the crash did throw me a bit. The thing that really floored me was Paula. I was sure she had set Harry up and was going to get on that plane and ride off into the sunset, leaving him dead or dying.