Night Moves (1975)

Favorite Gene Hackman movie from the most prolific part of his career
with a terrific soundtrack by Michael Small. Listen to the haunting
theme played on vibraphone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X4buM7cNl8

written by Alan Sharp
directed by Arthur Penn

cast
Gene Hackman as Harry Moseby
Jennifer Warren as Paula
Edward Binns as Joey Ziegler
Susan Clark as Ellen Moseby
Harris Yulin as Marty Heller
Kenneth Mars as Nick
Janet Ward as Arlene Iverson
James Woods as Quentin
Anthony Costello as Marv Ellman
John Crawford as Tom Iverson
Melanie Griffith as Delly

Dennis Dugan and Max Gail have bit parts.

Harry, a retired football player turned private detective, is referred
to Arlene by a mutual friend Nick. She needs her missing 16 year old
daughter Delly found. Arlene had been an actress with a small career who
married more successful men. She's widowed of Delly's father. The bulk
of his estate was left to Delly which her mother controls till she's 21,
but there's no estate to control with a missing daughter.

In addition to Nick, there's a group of flying stunt pilots who were
friends with Arlene from her movie days, including Joey, Tom (one of
Arlene's ex-husbands), and Marv (one of Arlene's old lovers). Quentin is
a mechanic who works on their planes and cars. After finding Marv, Harry
is convinced that Delly is getting revenge on her mother for her lousy
mother by working her way through her mother's past lovers, and
convinces Arlene to send him to the Florida Keys, as he thinks Delly
will next pursue Tom. Harry is right.

There he meets the intriguing Paula, truly the most memorable woman in
the film.

Harry and Ellen are married. Neither want to work on the problems in
their marriage. She takes a lover Marty and Harry works on the case.

In real life, Melanie Griffith is a more screwed up version of Delly.
Her parents split up when she was two. Her mother, of course, is Tippi
Hedren (still alive). This is the girl, age 14, whose free-spirit mother
allowed her to have a relationship with Don Johnson. They were married
on two separate occassions.

Delly was her first major film role. There is an outro to this movie
from another showing on TCM in which Ben Mankiewicz claims that even
though Melanie was 16 during production in 1973, that the movie's
release wasn't till 1975 allowed them to shoot her nude scenes once she
turned 18. But I've read quotes from an interview she gave in 1975
saying she could do topless but not bottomless nudity under Califonia
law. Years later, who would go back and shoot additional scenes for an
inexpensive movie? I don't know where TCM got that from.