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• Night Moves (1975)

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courtesy of imdb.com

One of the true hidden gems from the height of the new Hollywood renaissance of the early 1970s was director Arthur “Bonnie and Clyde” Penn’s 1975 crime mystery, Night Moves. Written by Alan Sharp, this nicely paced and skillfully layered Raymond Chandler-esque narrative tells the story of Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman), a small time LA private detective who is hired by an ex-B-film star (Melanie Griffith) to find her runaway 16-year-old daughter. Along the way Moseby runs into a bunch of renegade Hollywood stunt men, petty thieves and other criminal types, including a thug played by a young James Woods.

What makes Night Moves so unique is that it’s not just the standard ’70s detective story. Penn equally focuses on a character study of Moseby. Moseby is an ex-Oakland Raiders football player and avid chess player whose artsy wife is cheating on him and is ever so critical of his dedication to his business. Hackman plays Moseby with a touch of cynical charm and makes him more than just a moody disillusioned stereotype.

Veteran cinematographer Bruce Surtees shoots the film with dynamic realism, with touches of stylized film noir. All the story’s complexities are resolved in a skillfully choreographed small plane attack on a glass-bottomed fishing boat off the coast of Florida. This suspenseful sequence is very reminiscent of the famous crop dusting scene from Hitchcock’s classic North by Northwest.

Night Moves was one of the most overlooked films in its time — it only played for two weeks at Champaign’s old Rialto Theatre on Church St. in September of 1975, where I first saw it.