I didn't have very high expectations but was hopeful. I didn't think I'd find as rich of a period gem as Corman's "Bucket of Blood" or "Little Shop of Horrors." I was pleasantly drawn in by the opening soundtrack. The whole movie was full of wonderful music. I'll be hearing it in my head for a long time. The storyline was decent and almost believable. The acting was not bad; some of it was very good. And yes, some of it was pretty awful. Barry Newman as the lead beat has been criticized as being too clean cut for the part. Remember, this was before The Summer of Love and long hair on men was still very, very rare. In my opinion, he was suitably disheveled for a beat. Angel was quite stiffly portrayed, tho if I was a young woman involved with Lionel Stander, I guess I'd be a bit stiff, too. The ending was sort of predictable but satisfying. I'll watch it again.
5 Reviews
not surprised it never got much at all of a theatrical release
Quinoa19843 February 2008
The Moving Finger, the 'plus' feature on a DVD featuring Brian De Palma's Murder a la Mod, was made by Larry Moyer, a strictly independent/B-movie director who apparently never really directed again after this (he has one animation co-direct credit on a short). Not too surprising why; his film is a blend of even-for-then tired clichés between a heist plot and the swarm of the Beats down in the Village in the late 50s and early 60s. It's about a bank robber who gets shot, and is somehow able to make it on a bus down to Greenwhich village and hide out among a group of bum-beatniks who are allowed to stay as long as they appease the man who owns a dingy poetry club (inimitable, gravel voiced Lionel Stander, like Mickey from Rocky with "poetry in 'im").
Not much happens really, and despite Moyer's attempts to capture some reality of the squalor of the village scene at the time he doesn't get enough. He's tethered to a bad plot with crummy actors (save for Barry Newman, star of Vanishing Point, who oddly enough is here almost as a goof in the midst of the "tea-heads"), and long stretches of dancing and dialog to B-movie music that doesn't stick well. With more creative direction, and maybe more of an attempt to go with style as do the poetic bums of this world, this premise could have some lift. As it is, it's barely a half step above Mystery Science Theater status.
It's not a movie to seek out specifically if you've never seen it, and I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again if I rent the Murder a la Mod DVD again. Only redeeming quality is a scene with a cockroach race.
Not much happens really, and despite Moyer's attempts to capture some reality of the squalor of the village scene at the time he doesn't get enough. He's tethered to a bad plot with crummy actors (save for Barry Newman, star of Vanishing Point, who oddly enough is here almost as a goof in the midst of the "tea-heads"), and long stretches of dancing and dialog to B-movie music that doesn't stick well. With more creative direction, and maybe more of an attempt to go with style as do the poetic bums of this world, this premise could have some lift. As it is, it's barely a half step above Mystery Science Theater status.
It's not a movie to seek out specifically if you've never seen it, and I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again if I rent the Murder a la Mod DVD again. Only redeeming quality is a scene with a cockroach race.
Total piece of ****
qormi21 July 2019
Words cannot describe what a horribly lousy and awful waste of time this was. I had to turn it off after 40 minutes or I may have committed suicide. Yes, this was definitely the worst movie I ever witnessed. A group of unlikeable hipsters from the Beat Generation who have zero charisma are trying to figure out what they're doing, and they can't act their way out of a paper bag.
Un-praised Gem
spelvini14 February 2009
Winner of the Golden Gate Award in San Francisco for Best Director in 1963, The Moving Finger is an engaging no-budget noir feature with quite a few stars romping through in a satisfying commentary on integrity and survival in New York City.
The character of the entire Greenwich Village scene is well documented by showing many of the acts like jazz bands, belly dances, and even a wild party shot in an apartment showing a various array of alternate lifestyles. This is the period before the Summer of Love of 1966, very much the beat era and the party in the middle of the movie is a mini documentary of attitudes of the times. Consider the two lesbian and gay couples dancing through the festivities, or the way the peripheral characters alternately take part and look on. When Angel begins a strip scene (a la Fellini's La Dolce Vita) Amatol takes her home.
A scene in an Art exhibit opening has all the art-scene posers speaking inaudibly in sounds like taped human voice running too fast to be understood as Mason and his beat group stuff themselves with the hors d'oeuvres. The non-diegetic sound of the art patrons looking at a new exhibit is appropriately edited to express how Mason and his beats are part of but separate from the whirl of art that is seemingly populated by suited pseudo-intellectuals whose voices are just so much noise in the background.
It's a film seeking a style, concerned with the survival of the human spirit in a commercialized world. All the beats led by Mason have moneyed origins. Bridget is from a rich family and this is a sore spot with Mason as he criticizes her background. Anatole recites bad poetry and hires Mason and the beat group to look like beatniks in order to bring in tourists to sell more coffee and liquor and food. Another member of the group brings Mason and Bridget and the other Beats to his mother's town house where they discover his well-heeled financial background.
There are more than a few humorous moments in the film. The Cinéma Vérité style shows things in a rough light. Barry Newman's Mason hands out a selection of pills to his retinue one of them states: "Two of each: I'm having trouble with my sinuses." Later the group settles down to smoke a little special stuff and a cockroach race is initiated on the stock report of the New York Times news.
Once the location of the money is discovered Angel and Amatol fight about the $90 thousand dollars. Angel thinks it should be returned because it's "against the law" but Anatole argues "The bank took it from its customers, the hood took it from the bank, we take it from the hood- that's life, the survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle".
The film is built on small subtle elements that ultimately create a foundation for the success of the entire film. This theme is well established at the beginning of the film as an alley cat rummages through a garbage can to pull out a fish head; we then cut to Mason and Bridget and the rest of the beat group snatching milk from door steps, and bread from the bakers so they can eat, and Angel stealing some money from Anatole's pockets as he sleeps.
All the performances are well-defined despite of the low/no budget of director Larry Moyer. The cast is filled out with a cast that had already worked in superior movie and would go on the do even better film work.
Barry Newman as the beat deadbeat Mason looks like one of the many types of characters that were dropping out and turning on to find himself. Newman would go on the do much more film work and still appears in film and TV today. His performance as Kowalski, a drug-addled car driver in Vanishing Point in 1971 in many ways defines the eroded values of the 60s. Many of us may remember Newman as the attorney Anthony J. Petrocelli in "Petrocelli" which ran 45 episodes from 1974-1976.
Lionel Stander as the rough and ready Anatole made a career of turning in great character roles, and had worked with Fritz Lang in Hangmen Also Die. Later in his career won Golden Globe in 1983 for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV for: "Hart to Hart" (1979).
Art Smith as the grizzly Doc Savartz is a character actor who had by this time already worked with stars like Robert Montgomery as the FBI agent Bill Retz in the 1947 Ride the Pink Horse.
Any New Yorker will take joy in seeing the locations faithfully captured in the film. Many of the Greenwich Village landmarks are still the way they were in the movie, especially Washington Square Park and Sheraton Square.
The character of the entire Greenwich Village scene is well documented by showing many of the acts like jazz bands, belly dances, and even a wild party shot in an apartment showing a various array of alternate lifestyles. This is the period before the Summer of Love of 1966, very much the beat era and the party in the middle of the movie is a mini documentary of attitudes of the times. Consider the two lesbian and gay couples dancing through the festivities, or the way the peripheral characters alternately take part and look on. When Angel begins a strip scene (a la Fellini's La Dolce Vita) Amatol takes her home.
A scene in an Art exhibit opening has all the art-scene posers speaking inaudibly in sounds like taped human voice running too fast to be understood as Mason and his beat group stuff themselves with the hors d'oeuvres. The non-diegetic sound of the art patrons looking at a new exhibit is appropriately edited to express how Mason and his beats are part of but separate from the whirl of art that is seemingly populated by suited pseudo-intellectuals whose voices are just so much noise in the background.
It's a film seeking a style, concerned with the survival of the human spirit in a commercialized world. All the beats led by Mason have moneyed origins. Bridget is from a rich family and this is a sore spot with Mason as he criticizes her background. Anatole recites bad poetry and hires Mason and the beat group to look like beatniks in order to bring in tourists to sell more coffee and liquor and food. Another member of the group brings Mason and Bridget and the other Beats to his mother's town house where they discover his well-heeled financial background.
There are more than a few humorous moments in the film. The Cinéma Vérité style shows things in a rough light. Barry Newman's Mason hands out a selection of pills to his retinue one of them states: "Two of each: I'm having trouble with my sinuses." Later the group settles down to smoke a little special stuff and a cockroach race is initiated on the stock report of the New York Times news.
Once the location of the money is discovered Angel and Amatol fight about the $90 thousand dollars. Angel thinks it should be returned because it's "against the law" but Anatole argues "The bank took it from its customers, the hood took it from the bank, we take it from the hood- that's life, the survival of the fittest, the law of the jungle".
The film is built on small subtle elements that ultimately create a foundation for the success of the entire film. This theme is well established at the beginning of the film as an alley cat rummages through a garbage can to pull out a fish head; we then cut to Mason and Bridget and the rest of the beat group snatching milk from door steps, and bread from the bakers so they can eat, and Angel stealing some money from Anatole's pockets as he sleeps.
All the performances are well-defined despite of the low/no budget of director Larry Moyer. The cast is filled out with a cast that had already worked in superior movie and would go on the do even better film work.
Barry Newman as the beat deadbeat Mason looks like one of the many types of characters that were dropping out and turning on to find himself. Newman would go on the do much more film work and still appears in film and TV today. His performance as Kowalski, a drug-addled car driver in Vanishing Point in 1971 in many ways defines the eroded values of the 60s. Many of us may remember Newman as the attorney Anthony J. Petrocelli in "Petrocelli" which ran 45 episodes from 1974-1976.
Lionel Stander as the rough and ready Anatole made a career of turning in great character roles, and had worked with Fritz Lang in Hangmen Also Die. Later in his career won Golden Globe in 1983 for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV for: "Hart to Hart" (1979).
Art Smith as the grizzly Doc Savartz is a character actor who had by this time already worked with stars like Robert Montgomery as the FBI agent Bill Retz in the 1947 Ride the Pink Horse.
Any New Yorker will take joy in seeing the locations faithfully captured in the film. Many of the Greenwich Village landmarks are still the way they were in the movie, especially Washington Square Park and Sheraton Square.
See also
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