A private detective gets caught up in a sordid tale of sex and murder in 1975's Night Moves, one of the many neo-noirs of the 1970s that's clearly modelled on films based on Chandler and Hammett and novels (Faye Dunaway turned down a role in this movie to appear in Chinatown). With Gene Hackman as the detective protagonist, it's certainly an excellent specimen. An intriguing screenplay helps a lot.
Hackman plays Harry Moseby, a detective whose manliness, prowess, and not quite explicable appeal for every attractive woman and girl he meets maybe makes him more in the mould of a Mikey Spilane protagonist. Harry even used to be a pro football player. I wonder how many pro football players become private detectives. I wonder how frequent blows to the head might improve a man's capacity for deductive reasoning.
Harry finds out by pure chance that his wife is cheating on him. He confronts first the guy his wife's sleeping with and then his wife (Susan Clark). Both become defensive and angry with Harry. Harry even points this out when his wife, Ellen (Susan Clark), starts criticising the very concept of a private detective when he broaches the subject of her cheating on him. The movie stacks so many sympathy cards in Harry's deck, it would be absurd if it weren't for Hackman's performance which, as always, seems effortlessly natural.
The film also has a very young James Woods and an even younger Melanie Griffith whose nude scenes, shot when she was sixteen, necessitated a two year delay in the film's release. One of these scenes is the most memorable in the film and features on the poster--she goes for a nude swim at night and comes across a human corpse in a submerged plane. The eeriness of the shots vies with Shelley Winters in Night of the Hunter.
Night Moves is available on The Criterion Channel this month as part of a collection honouring Gene Hackman.
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