Ain't It Funny How the Night Moves

This post about Arthur Penn’s Night Moves is part of the For the Love of Film Noir Blog-a-thon, hosted by Ferdy on Films and The Self-Styled Siren. The purpose of the blogathon, which concludes next Monday, is to raise money for the Film Noir Foundation to help them restore The Sound of Fury, directed by Cy Endfield, a victim of the blacklist. A nitrate print of the film will be restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, who will use Martin Scorsese’s personal copy as a reference. Paramount Pictures owns the rights to the film, and they will also contribute to the restoration fund. Click here to donate via the button provided and to see the wide range of topics tackled by the participating bloggers. 

Director Arthur Penn died last September, prompting renewed interest in his career, particularly Bonnie and Clyde, one of the three films that launched the Film School Generation. Largely overlooked in the focus on his work was his contribution to film noir, Night Moves, which was part of a revival of the genre during the 1970s. The directors of this era were attracted to film noir because of its beautiful visual style, dark romanticism, and inherent criticism of the status quo. Educated and film literate, they reworked the genre for a generation disillusioned with mainstream society and the status quo, who had let America down with Vietnam, generational conflict, and Watergate.  Thus, the noirs of the 1970s—Chinatown, The Long Goodbye, Farewell My Lovely, The Drowning Pool, and Night Moves—offer a pessimism, cynicism, and thematic depth that surpass the original cycle of the genre.

Penn’s film may be the most difficult of this cycle, because he uses the history and formula of the noir genre as a framework to examine and criticize society and politics of the 1970s. To get the most out of Night Moves, viewers must do more than recognize the conventions of film noir; they must know the history of the genre, the function of the hard-boiled detective as an archetype, how Penn reworked the genre, and why.

 

Gene Hackman plays private detective Harry Moseby, who is hired by fading movie star Arlene Grastner to find her daughter Delly, a wild child of the hippie era who has run away to live with her stepfather in the Florida Keys. Harry escorts Delly (played by a 13-year-old Melanie Griffith) back to Hollywood, assuming his job is over. However, when the young girl turns up dead, he realizes that the case was about much more than a missing teenager. 

The secret to unlocking Night Movies is to compare the past (postwar America) to the present (post-Watergate America). Penn’s strategy was to allude to the classic era of film noir in Night Moves, prompting the viewer to make such a comparison. In classic noir, society was presented as corrupt and the detective figure flawed, but he still operated with a moral compass, and he still tried to solve the case. Noir detectives are often compared to tarnished knights charged with defending a deteriorating kingdom—they fight the noble battle for a lost cause. In Night Moves, characters continually compare Harry to Sam Spade, Bogart’s detective in The Maltese Falcon. Arlene Grastner—herself a relic of old Hollywood—asks  Harry, “Are you the kind of detective who once he gets on the case won’t let go?” During an argument between Harry and his estranged wife, she lashes out, “Why don’t you take a swing like Sam Spade?”

 But, Harry isn’t like Sam Spade. Penn paints Harry Moseby as an alienated, detached man incapable of actively solving a case or settling personal conflict. He follows Delly to the Keys, but he does nothing to make her come home. Instead, he hangs around, enjoying the open air, the tropical lifestyle, and the attention of the stepfather’s earthy girlfriend, Paula. It is Delly who decides to return to L.A. after the stepfather makes sexual advances toward her. Harry thinks Delly’s return signals that the case is over, but it is really only a link in a long chain of illegal activities in which likable characters commit serious crimes without thinking twice about their moral impact. And, Harry is unable to connect the dots in the case, resulting in Delly’s death. Harry’s inertia extends to his personal life. He follows his unfaithful wife, watching her with her lover, but fails to confront her directly. This mirrors an earlier incident in Harry’s life when he spent a great deal of time and effort to track down his long-lost father. When he found him, he merely sat in his car and watched the old man. Actually, Harry’s approach to tackling a case is to drive around, parking from time to time to conduct surveillance. Cocooned in his car, he sits alone, isolated from the outside world that he watches but does not connect with. Harry watches but does not see, and he follows but does not confront. 

The title of the film is a play on the phrase “knight moves.” Harry plays chess by himself, and in conversation with Paula, he describes a famous chess game involving a renowned player from long ago. The player failed to make “three little knight moves,” which could have led him to victory, but played something else instead and lost the match. “He didn’t see it,” Harry exclaims, describing himself without realizing it. Changing “knight” to “night” reminds viewers of one of noir’s key conventions: Much of the action occurs at night in low-key lighting when crimes and motives can be hidden. Night then becomes a signifier of all that is corrupt or rotten. 

Comparing Sam Spade to Harry Moseby forces a comparison between post-WWII America and the time of the film's release—between an era of postwar disillusionment when the American Dream was called into question and a new era of lost ideals when few even cared about social or personal progress a la the Dream. The character of Harry sums up the malaise and powerlessness of Americans in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era, especially from the perspective from someone like the politically conscious Penn. Despite the awareness, idealism, and commitment of the 1960s generation, they were no match for the entrenched corruption of politics, the lure of easy money, the apathy of Middle America, and the despair that comes from three political assassinations in a five-year period. The latter is made clear when Paula asks Harry, “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” Harry retorts, “Which Kennedy?”  It’s a chilling moment because it begs the question: What kind of world do we live in where two brothers who took action to make their country a better place are gunned down within five years of each other in broad daylight surrounded by supporters and authorities. It’s as though all that was wrong in this country moved from the cover of night to the bright of day, and there wasn’t anything that could be done about it. Small wonder Harry prefers “not to see it.”

Night Moves gives us something to think about regarding our own era of divisive politics that prevent progress, rampant corporate greed that has destroyed American manufacturing, and corruption in the belly of our financial beast that has left most of us shaking in its shadow. Ain’t it funny how the night moves? --Susan Doll