A nice and brief view on the making of "Night Moves"

This Warner Bros. Commissioned featurette covering the making of Arthur Penn's cult film "Night Moves" is a brief exposition of the making of the film, with some insights from its director. Ronald Saland made several of those specials for some of that studio films between the 1960's and 1970's, with a distant approach where we watch clips from a movie, behind of the scenes of some important sequences and there's a narrator revealing plenty of things about the movie.

Here we follow some curious and fun moments of a couple of the action sequences (my favorite bit shows Gene Hackman fighting with a tough guy, throwing him from a pier and into the water. The choreographic fight is lots of fun, as you see the technique involved with gentle and precise movements but when you see the actual film it really looks Hackman kicked the guy). But mostly revolves on the voice over talking some plot points of "Night Moves", some particular scenes and the great director Arthur Penn sharing his thoughts on making a movie and what he wants to capture from his actors. Considering the title, we should get a lot more opinions from the man, as he never directed a bad performance in his films - the special made for "Little Big Man" was outstanding.

Behind the scenes specials only grew in later years as some part of the audiences like to see the tricks behind the magic. Those early experiments were used to promote the film, so it's a quite basic presentation that tries not to spoil much of the film enjoyment and leave you curious for it. It's fine, but we don't get to see interviews with the actors, just some friendly interactions before filming a sequence. 7/10.

The documentary is a form of non-fiction storytelling that aims to present factual information, insights, and perspectives on real-world subjects, events, issues, or people. Documentaries can cover a wide range of topics, including history, science, culture, social issues, nature, biographies, and more.

Dziga Vertov in Man with a Movie Camera (1929)

The short form refers to creative works characterized by their brevity and concise storytelling. Unlike full-length feature films, short films have a running time of less than 45 minutes, while TV shorts have a running time of less than 22 minutes.

Benedict Cumberbatch in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023)

A short promotional film documenting the making of Arthur Penn's "Night Moves" (1975)

The Biggest Movies and TV Coming in September

See which big screen releases you can watch from the comfort of your couch.

Theatrical Releases Coming to Streaming

Get a closer look at these actors from their many TV and streaming series roles.

Streaming Stars, Then and Now

Arthur Penn in The Day of the Director (1975)

The Day of the Director

Photos6

Top Cast3

User reviews1

More like this

Related interests

Storyline

Did you know

Top picks

Details

Tech specs

Contribute to this page

More to explore

Recently viewed