Harry Moseby
Created by Alan Sharp

One of the great private eye flicks of all time, unfortunately overlooked these days. But it's a classic piece of modern-day film noir, boasting some of the best work of both director Arthur Penn and actor Gene Hackman. Hackman plays HARRY MOSEBY, a former running back for the Oakland Raiders, working as a small-time private eye in LA.

Poor Harry. He's an emotional cripple, a doomed figure doggedly throwing himself into his work. He'd rather solve other people's problems than his own. To escape the pressures of the disintegration of his own marriage, he takes on a wandering daughter job for a former starlet. Turns out that Delly is a trashy little teen sexpot (Melanie Griffith in her first -- and arguably best -- role), just like dear old mom, and Harry's not doing anyone any favors hauling her back to LA from the Florida Keys.

And that's just the beginning, as Harry (and the audience) soon discover that finding the answer to one question only opens up more questions in this dark, wonderfully complex film full of moral ambiguous twists and turns and some wonderful performances, including a sexually charged encounter between the lonely Harry and Jennifer Warren, a woman living in tropic squalor in the Keys with a man dealing in some very strange goods indeed..

"Everybody's doomed...empty vessels searching for something to fill them up...," rhapsodizes Barry Gifford in The Devil Thumbs a Ride, "Everyone's behaviour is shameful, low-rent. Penn succeeds in not giving us one likable character. If that ain't noir, what is?"

A classic, well worth staying up to watch on the late show. And look for Max Gail, Jr. (Barney Miller) and Dennis Dugan (Richie Brockelman!) in small parts.

UNDER OATH

• "This vastly underrated Arthur Penn film from the mid-1970s ranks as one of the era's nastiest and most fascinating pieces of business, a detective story that shuttles back and forth between Hollywood and the Florida Keys, with a plot nearly as complex as Chinatown. Gene Hackman stars as a tired, aging private eye who, as a favor to a friend, agrees to track down a runaway teen. But the case turns out to be something much larger: a smuggling ring of Mayan antiquities. The human impulses get darker and darker and Hackman's character gets pulled in deeper and deeper, even as his own life is falling apart. Ultimately, in one of his best and most unsung performances, Hackman winds up hurting the people he is trying to help. A great cast includes Susan Clark, Jennifer Warren, a young James Woods, and a very young Melanie Griffith"
  (Marshall Fine, Amazon.com)

THE EVIDENCE

• "Listen Delly, I know it doesn't make much sense when you're sixteen. Don't worry. When you get to be forty, it doesn't any better."
  (Harry waxes philosphical)
  
  
• Woman: "Do you remember where you were when Kennedy was shot?"
  Harry: "Which Kennedy?"
  The woman just shrugs and says: "Any Kennedy."?
  
  
• Harry: "Listen Delly, I know it doesn't make much sense when you're sixteen. Don't worry. When you get to be forty, it doesn't any better"
  
  
• Woman: "Oh, that's a beauty."
  Harry: "Yeah, but he didn't see it. He played something else and he lost. He must have regretted it every day of his life. I know I would have. As a matter of fact I do regret it, and I wasn't even born yet."
  
  
• Harry: "You told me fairy tales... About Malone... Billy Danreuther... The President getting shot... Your erect nipples!"
  

TRIVIA

• Director Arthur Penn and actor Gene Hackman were filming Night Moves in Philip Kaufman's house when Kaufman was arrested for the theft of country-rock legend Gram Parsons' body.
  .
• In a memorable scene, Paula (Jennifer Warren) tells Harry that the first boy who ever touched her breasts was named Billy Dannreuther. That's the name of Humphrey Bogart's character in Beat the Devil (1953).
  

FILM

• NIGHT MOVES....Buy this video....Buy this DVD
  (1975, Warner Brothers)
  Tagline: Maybe he would find the girl... maybe he would find himself.
  Screenplay by Alan Sharp
  Directed by Arthur Penn
  Produced by Robert M. Sherman
  Starring Gene Hackman as HARRY MOSEBY
  Also starring Susan Clark, Jennifer Warren, John Crawford, Edward Binns, Harris Yulin, James Woods, Melanie Griffith, Dennis Dugan, Maxwell Gail, Jr.

NOVELIZATIONS

• Night Moves (1975, by Alan Sharp, from his original screenplay) ...Buy this DVD

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.