Directed by Arthur Penn • 1975 • United States
Starring Gene Hackman, Jennifer Warren, Edward Binns
Arthur Penn’s haunting neonoir reimagines the hard-boiled detective film for the disillusioned, paranoid 1970s. In one of his greatest performances, Gene Hackman oozes world-weary cynicism as a private investigator whose search for an actress’s missing daughter (Melanie Griffith) leads him from the Hollywood Hills to the Florida Keys, where he is pulled into a sordid family drama and a sinister conspiracy he can hardly grasp. Bolstered by Alan Sharp’s genre-scrambling script and Dede Allen’s elliptical editing, the daringly labyrinthine NIGHT MOVES is a defining work of post-Watergate cinema—a silent scream of existential dread and moral decay whose legend has only grown with time.
Up Next in ’70s Thrillers
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The Anderson Tapes
Directed by Sidney Lumet • 1971 • United States
Starring Sean Connery, Dyan Cannon, Martin BalsamA prescient vision of the rise of the surveillance state, this paranoid heist thriller stars Sean Connery as Duke Anderson, an ex-con just out of prison who hatches a daring scheme to rob every unit...
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The Parallax View
Directed by Alan J. Pakula • 1974 • United States
Starring Warren Beatty, Hume Cronyn, William DanielsPerhaps no director tapped into the pervasive sense of dread and mistrust that defined the 1970s more effectively than Alan J. Pakula, who, in the second installment of his celebrated Paranoia ...
