![]() As Andrew Sarris famously wrote about "My Night at Maud"'s, there's nothing more cinematic than the spectacle of a man and a woman saying up all night talking. It does "Night Moves" and Rohmer a great disservice when that line is quoted as if it's simply a swipe at the French director's movies, which are light on action and heavy on conversation. ("Night Moves" also stars Jennifer Warren, James Woods, Melanie Griffith, Max Gail, Kenneth Mars and Harris Yulin who, as I have pointed out many times before, should be in every movie ever made.) He's accused of staking her out, as he would have done for any of his sleazy infidelity cases. The edge in this earlier scene suggests that his discovery may not have been entirely inadvertent. Later that night, Harry drives by the theater as the movie is letting out and sees something indicating that his wife may be having an affair. ![]() "You seem to get some weird kind of satisfaction from this sort of thing, don't you?" Charles replies. Moseby is asserting his macho credentials, and ends the scene by teasing Charles about going bowling again sometime. (Watch the clip above.) Ellen ( Susan Clark) invites Harry to join her and Charles (Ben Archibek - that's him at the end of the clip) for a movie: Eric Rohmer's classic " My Night at Maud's" (1970), about an engaged man ( Jean-Louis Trintignant) who spends a long, memorable night in conversation with a divorcee (Françoise Fabian). What some (not all) of the quoters didn't seem to realize or remember is that Harry's remark, as scripted by Alan Sharp, is a brittle homophobic jab at a gay friend of his wife's. It wasn't long before it even became a Twitter meme: #nightmoves. And although the investigation eventually picks up again, Night Moves has, by that point, alienated the viewer to such a degree that it’s virtually impossible to work up any real enthusiasm in the story’s (impressively grim) outcome – which does, in the end, cement the picture’s place as a distressing misfire that squanders a typically solid Hackman performance."I saw a Rohmer film once. It’s disappointing to note, then, that Night Moves eventually progresses into a meandering midsection that slowly-but-surely drains the viewer’s interest and attention, as the narrative essentially comes to a dead stop once Harry arrives at a Florida locale and seemingly solves the case for which he was hired – with the newfound character-study vibe hardly as engrossing or intriguing as Penn has obviously intended. Filmmaker Penn, working from Alan Sharp’s screenplay, delivers a fairly standard murder mystery that ultimately fares best in its engaging, entertaining opening stretch, as the movie benefits substantially from Hackman’s predictably compelling, lived-in efforts and Penn’s irresistibly atmospheric approach to the material. Directed by Arthur Penn, Night Moves follows private investigator Harry Moseby (Gene Hackman) as he agrees to track down a runaway teenager (Melanie Griffith’s Delly) and inevitably finds himself caught up in a complicated conspiracy.
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