Night Moves

In Los Angeles the private detective Harry Moseby takes a job from a former film star to find her runaway daughter. He finds her in the Florida Keys and brings her back. The job looks finished. Then the girl dies and Harry goes back. In the same period his own marriage collapses; he learns his wife is seeing someone else and can do nothing about that either. Arthur Penn directed. Gene Hackman plays Harry and Melanie Griffith plays Delly, the runaway. It is one of the most cited films of post-Watergate America: the detective investigates everything and solves nothing, and at the moment he thinks he has it he cannot save anyone. It did not work on release and played in few cinemas. Its standing has completely reversed and it is now counted among the essential noirs of the seventies. The ending is its own matter. Shot, Harry tries to steer his boat, cannot reach the gears, and the boat starts turning in a circle; as the camera rises it goes round and round in the Gulf Stream. That image has been read both as America's lost identity after Watergate and as the shape of Harry's fruitless search. Who it is for: viewers who like the bleak detective films of the seventies and Gene Hackman. Who it is not for: anyone wanting resolution. In the film's own words, nothing gets solved here.