The Long Goodbye (1973)

Elliott Gould offers up one of his most amusing performances as Raymond Chandlers' private eye character Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is visited in the wee hours of the morning by his friend Terry Lennox (baseball player Jim Bouton). He does his friend a favour by driving him all the way to Tijuana. Some time after that, he learns that, in fact, Terry's wife Sylvia is dead, presumably killed by Terry, who has also offed himself. Then he is hired for a supposedly simple case: find Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden), a boozy writer, for his wife Eileen (Nina van Pallandt). In the time-honoured tradition of detective fiction, Marlowe will discover that the separate stories turn out to be connected.Filmmaker Robert Altmans' take on the whole Neo-Noir genre does take some getting used to. It's a lot more irreverent, and goofy, than some people will expect. Devotees of Chandler and classic film noir will likely be dismayed. Scripted by the legendary Leigh Brackett, the dialogue does flow from the mouths of the cast with real ease, and it is reasonably entertaining to watch as this thing develops. After a while, however, even a viewer such as this one can see where the story is headed.Goulds' version of Marlowe is a real change of pace. He's a quirky, hip, unflappable wise-ass who's willing to head to an all-night supermarket to obtain the only brand of cat food that his pet will eat. And he's just one memorable character in this interesting stew of a film. Hayden plays his washed-up writer for everything that it's worth. Film director Mark Rydell ("The Rose") is clearly relishing his meaty acting role as a brutal Jewish gangster. Henry Gibson ("The Blues Brothers") is an effective weasel as a doctor who expects to be PAID for his services. Danish actress Van Pallandt is alluring as the femme fatale of the piece. And there are a couple of very familiar faces in small roles: Jack Riley ('The Bob Newhart Show'), Rutanya Alda ("Mommie Dearest"), David Carradine as a chatty convict, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of Rydells' goons.Set in a sunny but rather seedy California of the 70s (complete with spacey hippie neighbours for Marlowe), this is an entertainingly convoluted tale, and a rather slowly paced one, but it always remains...interesting. It's definitely an unusual spin on the typical noir film.Seven out of 10.

Altman's take on Chandler seems increasingly influential as the years go by. His film takes the form of a detective story, but the story doesn't really go anywhere ... or more precisely, goes a whole lot of places just to end up back where it started. The pleasure here isn't in the mechanics of the story so much as having these characters interact in laid back 1970's California and have something like a plot emerge from their interactions. The seeds of "The Big Lebowski" and (especially) "Inherent Vice" lie right here. People tend to play up the "1950's Marlowe adrift in 1970's L.A." angle, but I've never really felt that angle comes through to clearly. Since you can't really get more quintessentially early 70's than Elliott Gould, I have never felt that he seems out of step here.

"The Long Goodbye" is vintage Altman. It ranks not only as one of his best works, but one of the best films of the 1970's. Ignore the negative comments, this is supposed to be an updating of Chandlers character Philip Marlowe to a more contemporary setting which was the whole point and Altman does it very cleverly in the most unexpected ways. Elliot Gould truly shines in his interesting interpretation of Marlowe. Seemingly lacking the confidence and self assurance of Humphrey Bogart. The problem, unfortunately, is that Altman doesn't understand what motivates Marlowe. He doesn't understand Marlowe's sense of friendship or honor. He does understand cruelty, which is why Marty is such a great invention. He also understands betrayal, which is why Eileen Wade is still a superb femme fatale. To some degree, he understands Roger Wade's whiny depression. But he doesn't get Marlowe at all, so he turns Chandler's meditation on lost friendship into a simplistic revenge story.You could say that Altman's treatment of Marlowe is "ironic," but that just confirms that he is out of his depth. There is nothing ironic about Chandler, and there shouldn't be. Marlowe's defining qualities are his ability to see through lies and his profound moral disgust for betrayal and dishonesty. He is not a vigilante in a bat suit. Marlowe illustrates the idea that, even if you are powerless to change the course of events, you can still maintain an unbreakable judgment of them. The whole point of Marlowe is that sometimes what you do has real consequences and determines who you are, and you have no way to ironically dance away from your actions. However clever, a parody isn't the equal of an original mystery novel. This movie is too serious to be a comedy, and too funny for a murder mystery. I suspect this confusion made it a commercial failure. The movie runs on too long. I did enjoy the cinematography (shots of Malibu and Mexico particularly) and being reminded of the goofiness of the early 70's, from the bad clothes to the bad haircuts,for both men and women. But all in all, not much to do with the original Marlowe. An Altman melange that does not quite amount to anything.Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

When I first saw this film back in the 70's, I thought it was just too quirky like many movies made at the time. However, 40 years later, I can appreciate it more and I'm glad I gave it another look.Private eye Philip Marlow lives in Los Angeles with his cat. When a friend asks to be driven to Mexico, it leads into a story of suicide, murder, a scheming woman, a setup, a frame-up, a dodgy doctor and a psychotic gangster.To be honest, the plot is a bit ordinary as was the story in the original novel, but just as it was on the printed page, the power of the movie was in the telling.Years ago, I read Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels and if the plots weren't overly convoluted, they were implausible. The success was in the character Chandler created and the way he described his world. Altman got it; the film is different to the novel, but it's all about Marlowe and the way he reacts to what is happening around him.Altman didn't set his film in the late 40's as depicted in the novel, otherwise it would have been more like "Farewell My Lovely" with Robert Mitchum as Marlowe made a couple of years later.Altman places Marlowe in 1970's Los Angeles. Bogart and Mitchum gave us classic Marlowe, but Elliott Gould gives us something different. He's a man who sticks to a personal set of principles despite seeming out of place. Elliott Gould plays him as pretty chilled-out, and the film captures a sense of disillusionment with just about everything – it was the 70's after all.Arnold Schwarzenegger has a non-speaking part as a heavy, and an aging Sterling Hayden plays an author with issues. Perfect casting really as the imposing Hayden was apparently drunk or stoned most of the time on this film.The movie has a different ending to the novel and it's not a totally satisfying one; the final scene even pays a little homage to the final scene in "The Third Man". One thing the film does is highlight the unique vision of Robert Altman who gave a new twist to an almost dead genre.