NIGHT MOVES (1975)

Improbably, this private detective pic has, in the long run, proved director Arthur Penn’s best work.  Improbable when you consider how seriously he was taken, commercially & critically after THE MIRACLE WORKER (tv/stage/film), LITTLE BIG MAN/‘70 and of course BONNIE AND CLYDE/’67.  Yet NIGHT MOVES now the one Penn title whose rep has improved rather than diminished over time.  An also-ran on release, the oxygen having been sucked out of the room by Francis Coppola’s THE CONVERSATION/’74, first out with too many similarities and a seductive Euro-Art tone.  (It was also, as Coppola’s team must have known, BLOW-UP for Beginners.)  Similarities start with Gene Hackman starring in both as an investigator with a troubled private life misreading recordings (audio in CONVERSATION/16mm here) to deadly effect.  An underlying human alienation and dirge-like inevitability that seethes just below the surface.  Finally surging over its limit with a technically challenging flourish.  Writing off MOVES as just a genre vehicle for Hackman’s P.I. a mistake; and a poor excuse then & now to skip this well worked up missing person case that leads to a murdered man and half-a-million bucks in stolen art.  Plus four lying dames if you include a cheating wife and 16-yr-old Melanie Griffith's nude debut.  And Penn's got the cast to pull it off: Susan Clark’s inconstant wife; Jennifer Warren as tempting stand-in; Edward Binns as careless movie stunt arranger; James Woods as car mechanic & probable accomplice and Harris Yulin as limping lover.  A personal best from scripter Alan Sharp and boasting a grounded ‘70s Cali style look from cinematographer Bruce Surtees, elsewise shooting everything Clint Eastwood & Don Siegel were doing at the time.  Penn never tried something like this again.  Perhaps he considered it slumming.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: As mentioned, THE CONVERSATION.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/conversation-1974.html