A look at the introspective nature of the 70s movie gumshoe.
The Archivist — Welcome to the Archive. As home video formats have evolved over the years, a multitude of films have found themselves in danger of being forgotten forever due to their niche appeal. Thankfully, Warner Bros. established the Archive Collection, a Manufacture-On-Demand DVD operation devoted to thousands of idiosyncratic and ephemeral works of cinema. The Archive has expanded to include a streaming service, revivals of out-of-print DVDs, and Blu-ray discs (which, unlike the DVDs, are factory pressed rather than burned). Join us as we explore this treasure trove of cinematic discovery!
For most of the noir period of film and even for a time beyond it, the movie detective was a figure known for his tough steeliness. He took no crap, pulled no punches, and most of all, never let too much of his personal emotions and sense of humanity interfere with the job that needed to get done. When the 1970s came around, the film landscape had changed, favoring character-driven movies steeped in realism. This signaled a change for all kinds of movie character archetypes, not least of all the detective himself. Once known to hang around a gin joint with a cigarette dangling from his mouth looking for suspects, the detective in movies throughout the 1970s was seen as a more affected individual who was both shaken and driven by the events of his life than ever before.
In this edition of The Archivist, we tag along with two prime examples of from that era and find out what became of the detective from the romanticized 40s as he entered the gritty 70s. In both 1975’s Night Moves and 1976’s The Late Show, we see how a beloved caricature turned into a flesh and blood individual and kept his cool while coping with the drastically changing times around him.
Night Moves
Arthur Penn’s Night Moves might be one of the director’s most celebrated works, despite being still largely unknown. Gene Hackman plays Harry Moseby, a Los Angeles private eye who enjoys a steady stream of business and a stable marriage to Ellen (Susan Clark). When Harry discovers his wife is having an affair however, he’s devastated and throws himself into work in order to cope, taking the first case that comes along. That case happens to involve a boozy former starlet named Arlene (Janet Ward), who hires Harry to track down her runaway teenage daughter Delilah (Melanie Griffith). The case will eventually take Harry from the L.A. movie scene to the deep Florida Keys, giving him far more than he bargained for in the process.
Cited by Michael Scragow in his acclaimed book Produced and Abandoned: The Best Films You’ve Never Seen, Night Moves is a film which was all but ignored upon its (delayed) release in 1975. This is somewhat baffling considering how in sync the film is with the decade. While Harry is painted as more hero than anti-hero, he is nonetheless seen as a conflicted individual. His scenes with Ellen, who for years has been begging him to leave the business and take an offer for a more conventional job, are full of such rich character moments that could only come from a 70s Penn film. When the revelation of his wife’s betrayal thrust him into a rage, Harry finds he’s more mad at himself than with Ellen. Although Harry takes the case as a means of personal escape, he cannot help but enter a process of self-examination in the many characters and suspects he encounters. Hackman is good here, as is the rest of the cast (especially Griffith in her film debut), and Penn manages to craft a story that’s quiet and telling all at the same time. There is a deeper mystery to the case in Night Moves, involving the film industry and international smuggling. Yet while that aspect is certainly intriguing, the strength of Night Moves lies in its main character and the unexpected journey of self-reflection he’s forced to take.
The Late Show
Boasting a rare 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (if you’re into that stuff), The Late Show is one of those precious gems of a film whose beauty and value only grows stronger with each viewing. Art Carney stars in the comedy/thriller as Ira Welles, an aging, retired private eye who is shocked one night when a former associate (Howard Duff) shows up at his door after being shot. At his funeral, Ira is approached by an old friend named Charlie (Bill Macy) who wants the former P.I. to help a quirky young woman named Margo Sterling (Lily Tomlin) find her kidnapped cat. Reluctant and disinterested as can be to get involved, Ira eventually agrees to take on the case when he discovers a link between his friend’s death and the missing feline.
The sheer joy of The Late Show is the way it balances mystery and comedy without favoring one over the other and never treating either genre with anything other than love and respect. This is true in the film’s central mystery which is plucked from the age of Fritz Lang and dropped right into the world of Robert Altman (who, incidentally, acts as producer here). Writer/director Robert Benton crafts a well-made mystery involving stolen goods and high-powered thugs for a story which is at once both seemingly simple and also deceptively layered. The way he manages to insert laughs into the mix is a great trick, with most coming courtesy of Carney and Tomlin’s dynamic pairing. The two give Oscar-worthy performances as polar opposites who must work together despite not fully understanding each other’s ideology. His old-school approach and her 70s new age ways make for endless fireworks and give The Late Show a one-of-a-kind brand of fireworks no other pair of actors could have sparked. But the movie is ultimately Carney’s tale and he more than proves it as he conjures up the image of the kind of past-his-prime Sam Spade who mourns and longs for the past as he tries to make heads or tails of the strange world he’s in now.
