Arthur Penn's night movies, plus a note on the Internet and the decline of factual accuracy

I've finally got around to watching Night Moves and, while it does not move as slowly as one commenter here suggested, it hits the viewer over the head with references to its own antecedents — and then hits them over the head again with references to its own references.

So, we get Gene Hackman's Harry Moseby playing solo chess in his car as he lies in wait for his wife's lover. In case anyone misses the reference to Philip Marlowe, the lover then taunts him thus: "Come on, take a swing at me, Harry, the way Sam Spade would." And yes, Moseby plays a private investigator.

Or Moseby goes to interview a man on a movie set during the filming of a bi-plane flying low over a dusty country road. In case anyone doesn't get the North by Northwest reference, director Arthur Penn then has the stunt flyer buzz Moseby and the guy he's talking to, making them duck. In case anyone still doesn't get it, Hackman then says, "I'd say we saw the same movies."

Night Moves is thirty-five years old, and that sort of thing must have seemed a lot fresher in 1975 than it does today.

OK, that was the movie's first twenty minutes. Now, let's go watch the rest.

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IMDb.com misquotes the line it singles out under "Quotes" on its main Night Moves page. The line as delivered by Jennifer Warren is

"When we all get liberated like Delly, there's going to be fighting in the streets."

and not, as the Amazon-owned, user-generated IMDb has it,

"When we're all as free as Delly there'll be rioting in the streets."

(By the way, Wikipedia has still not corrected at least one of the errors in its plot summary of Get Carter, errors I noted on Wiki's discussion forum at least six months ago. Factual accuracy is so pre-Wiki, so pre-digital, so pre-democratization-of-information a notion.)

N.B. IMDb has moved the quotation off its main Night Moves page, but it has not corrected its mistake. You now have to go "Quotes," then click "see more" and scroll down to find the inaccurately quoted line in question.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Raymond Chandler, father of '60s cinema?

1) Here's a bit of dialogue from Raymond Chandler's story "Blackmailers Don't Shoot." Tell me why you think it works:

"`You wouldn't have a gun, would you, Slippy' he said, nudging the Luger forward. `Turn slow and easy, Slippy. When you feel something against your spine, go on in, Slippy. We'll be right with you.'"

2) Here are two more short bits, question to follow:

"The lanky man's duck became a slide and the slide degenerated into a fall. He spread himself out on the bare carpet in a leisurely sort of way."

and

"Macdonald put his other hand up to the door-frame, leaned forward and began to cough. Bright red blood came out on his chin. His hands came down the door-frame slowly. Then his shoulder twitched forward, he rolled like a swimmer in a breaking wave, and crashed. He crashed on his face, his hat still on his head, the mouse-colored hair at the nape of his neck showing below it in an untidy curl."

Does that remind you of anything? Slow-motion death became a movie staple with Arthur Penn and Sam Peckinpah in the late 1960s and a cliché sometime thereafter; Chandler published his story in Black Mask in December 1933. Did Chandler's writing of the '30s influence Peckinpah's and Penn's film making of the '60s? What other authors have influenced directors or cinematographers? And what movie makers have influenced writers?

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Chandler's short fiction, written with protagonists not named Philip Marlowe, is a good place to start for readers who want to experience the author outside Humphrey Bogart's stupendous shadow.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010