The Long Goodbye
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Movie Reviews of The Long Goodbye
Movie Review: Rip-Van-Marlowe makes for a great neo-noir movie, '70s style
Summary: 5 Stars
It has taken me many years to come around to "The Long Goodbye". For one thing, I was scared off by all of the bad press surrounding Leigh Brackett's alterations to Ramond Chandler's novel. And, for anyone who is already familiar with the novel, how you respond to these alterations will very much be your own personal reaction - there's no denying that. Chandler tended to write rather subtle, inconclusive, or enigmatic endings. Brackett clearly knew that, which is why Hollywood asked her to make the endings to both "The Big Sleep" and "The Long Goodbye", more cinematically friendly in the first place. But unlike "The Big Sleep", where one is still left wondering who did what to whom (and when), there's absolutely no question here as to what happened and why. In fact, if anything, the conclusion to this movie version of "T.L.G." is sort of a precursor to the very shocking ending we see in "Prizzi's Honor" - the main attraction of that shabby little shocker. In other words, the story and its narrative is as air-tight as anyone could possibly want it to be. But don't get me wrong, I still think that "The Big Sleep" is one of the greatest noirs of all time.
No, what made me pick up "T.L.G." was something else altogether; something unexpected: the theme music. The music was composed by John Williams and Johnny Mercer. I stumbled across a Youtube excerpt, and there was my jazz hero, Jack Sheldon, singing the movie's theme song. That alone made me want to get this (I collect most everything with J.S.). But, just as with the more famous movie "Laura", the theme song gets sounded throughout the entire picture. However, unlike "Laura", "The Long Goodbye" - that's the name of the tune as well - goes through many different styles and permutations during the course of the film. As a result, the movie doesn't feel like it's just an advertisement for a possible radio hit.
The best example of this is in the first of two scenes filmed down in Mexico. Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is trying to get information from the village authorities as to how and when his friend, Terry, allegedly died down there. During the course of their somewhat bizarre discussions, a poor sounding village band plays "T.L.G." tune while accompanying a funeral cortege through the town's cobbled streets. Then we immediately segue to a party scene back at the Malibu Beach home of Mr. and Mrs. Wade, where a few revelers who are crowding around a modest upright piano, crank out a sort of fast, bossa nova rendition of the same tune - almost Brazil '66 like. The juxtaposition of these two scenes and two styles couldn't possibly be more stark and dramatic. It's almost as though the theme song is used as a Wagnerian leitmotif throughout this film.
As for Marlowe himself, I think Elliott Gould is brilliant. Much has been made of Altman's "Rip Van Marlowe" approach - a Marlowe who wakes up in a far more indifferent 1970s. Marlowe doesn't know the D.A. here, and the L.A. Police are completely indifferent to him. If anything, he's just a nuissance. They regard him as though he were a doctor who's just a quack. This time, Marlowe has no friends downtown. His credentials mean nothing. But that also permits Marlowe to be more freelance than ever. He's now able to think fully for himself, and is better able to make quick assessments of the situation. This pays off in the end, as Marlowe still clings to his 1940's, good world/bad world values. Given that fact, it's all the more relevant that Mr. Wade - Sterling Hayden - keeps referring to Marlowe as "Marlboro", or "The Marlboro Man" (to his wife).
And, of course, the scenes with Elliott Gould and Sterling Hayden are quite famous for Hayden's quick witted, turn-on-a-dime improvisations. He plays a burned out writer who has turned to the bottle in hopes finding some further inspiration - a tired cliche' if there every was one. But Hayden twists this hackneyed theme to his advantage: he's totally over-the-top in the best tradition of the excessive 1970s. These scenes alone are worth the price of admission.
All in all, for whatever faults it may possess, there's also an awful lot going for this 1970s, "Rip Van Marlowe" rendition of "The Long Goodbye" ("it's a loooong goodbye, . . and it happens everyday").
Movie Review: Inspired Orchestration of Talent
Summary: 5 Stars
Robert Altman at top form here delivers a revolutionary and breakthrough film that is still under-appreciated, perhaps because it is too easily tagged as updated film noir. Say what you want about the Marlowe character and the Chandler novels -- it was all top flight pulp fiction, that's all, no matter how it fascinated the French and who started calling it noir.
The plot has been done 100,000 times -- cheap detective and unsolved crime, beautiful woman as alluring foil, and a host of red herrings, weirdos, suspects, crazies, all keeping you on edge until last cut. And sure, Bogart nailed this particular character memorably in the author's own time, in a manner which could only have been done then. But neither the text nor character are sancrosanct. They were good available fodder to launch something more.
That something more is an extraordinary actuality, a gritty realism that captures BOTH southern California and the 1970s -- a time and a place -- as nothing else on record. Watching the movie is uncanny, like entering a dream or a time warp. It reminds you of the possibilities of cinema that still, with the art form not yet a century old, remain to be explored. The wayward Gould is perfect, and he is perfectly used. The great and under-rated Sterling Hayden delivers a vastly haunting performance, as a man from a whole other American time and place -- just as real as the one on camera but already gone -- leaving him a quite menacing fish out of water. The music -- a lovely but endlessly repeated strain, finally becomes as stultifyingly hypnotizing as a mantra from the far east. That plus a surrealistic camera drench you in the great big NOW -- yet combine to give the movie the patina of timelessness. All the characters are caught in this gauzy vision as if in amber, specimens ever freshly packaged and delivered to us in all the weirdness and eccentricity of their time and place. And finally, the master's touch -- using two non-actors for the key noir roles -- "disgraced" (just disgracefully honest, really) baseball pitcher turned author Jim Bouten as the baddie, and the mistress of then headlines maker Clifford Irving (forger of the notorious fake Howard Hughes autobiography) as the femme fatale. It is as if Altman lifts these two, in the cucoons of their media noteriety of the day, and finds matching fictive wrappings to transport their enigmas fully intact to us and the unknown future. That effect is incredible enough, but the undertow is how it ups the ante for what the seemingly hapless Gould character must do -- in his own way ripped out of time and place and thrown helpless into a strange and terrifying world. You certainly wouldn't figure he would prevail.
Altman's unique gift is to orchestrate the talent, set all the balls in motion, then get out of the way, let others run downfield with his inspirations. Far from being the sort of controlling director as Kubrick or Orson Welles, or for that matter Kurosawa or Bergman, Altman is true successor to the mantle of Nicholas Ray, maker of Rebel Without a Cause. His enterprise exudes a democratic American confidence, but not shouting at you, either. This film ranks as twin peak to his Nashville, his other best work. All that, and the film is also funny as hell. And finally more grimly serious than any classic noir, as all moves to convulsive and unexpected conclusion. The difference from ordinary noir is that this take on the genre is not stylized. It takes the plum out of the pulp fiction, so to speak, treats that little germ of truth in Raymond Chandler's noir world as seriously as any big truth in serious literature, something to be fully explored, developed, reckoned with. When Marlowe walks away at the end he's no longer Marlowe, he's somebody you never met and hope you never do, a terrifying moment of revelation.
Movie Review: The scattershot magic of Robert Altman
Summary: 5 Stars
There are so many good ideas and concepts at work in this film. Here are a few: 1: In the DVD Special Features, Director Robert Altman talks about his overall concept for this film. His problem was how does a filmaker take a character that is so much from a different era and place him in modern times? Altman came up with a conceptual framework: look at the film as though Philip Marlowe, Chandler's ace detective from the 1940's, has been sleeping for thirty years and wakes up in the 1970's. Altman called it his "Rip Van Marlowe" concept. He thought of the film this way because he wanted to place the classic 1940 Marlowe sense of integrity and ethical code in the free-wheeling Seventies. This idea is ingenious and fits Eliott Gould's hip but outsider acting style to a tee.
2: Altman keeps the camera moving at all times. The lens does not jerk around in a mise en scene way, but more with long, smooth tracking and pan shots. This gives the movie a great feeling of constant action and forward movement, even when folks are just talking. The camera movement is done in such a smooth way, it seems very natural - as if you, the viewer, were really watching the action and simply turning your head to follow the flow of life.
3: The movie theme song is beautiful and was written by Johnny Mercer. It has a classic feel, and it dominates the sound of the film. Altman has put this haunting melody everywhere; in the sound of a doorbell, in the tune played in a Mexican funeral, in songs that come over half-heard radios - everywhere. It is the song the small time lounge piano player is trying to learn in the background of one scene, and it is the song that you will find yourself humming once the film is over. All this is almost done on a subliminal level, and it is brilliant.
4: The casting is tremendous and original. Elliott Guild is perfect as the man that seems out of place and almost lackadaisical on the surface, yet has a steel hard code of ethics that he lives by even - especially when - no one else does. Jim Bouton, the ex baseball star and writer of Foul Ball, is cast as Marlowe's friend, and he is a treat to watch - all smarmy smile and charm. Another Altman favorite, Henry Gibson of Laugh-In fame is around as the reptilian Dr. Verringer and Sterling Hayden booms through his tragic turn as the Hemingway-like writer Roger Wade. Everyone is very good. Watch for two cool cameos: David Carradine as a hip-talking anti-establishment inmate that Marlowe meets in a short stay in prison, and Arnold Schwarzenegger (that's right, governor Schwarzenneger) as a wordless muscle bound enforcer.
I really love this movie. As a director, Robert Altman gives actors more room than any other director in film history. He lets them, as he says in the DVD special features, "do what they became actors to do: be creative." This has its pluses and minuses, but it could, in some films, really make magic. There is a "lifelike" quality to the best of Altman's work, which is to say some of the best moviemaking ever done. I am thinking about Nashville and McCabe and Mrs. Miller, both films that linger and gain power in memory.
I will not give the end away, but it is worth waiting for and a real surprise. It is the moment in the film when the fairy-dust and dope smoke of the 70's is stripped away to reveal Gould/Marlowe's adamantine core; a center constructed around a very tight code of loyalty and integrity.
Do yourself a favor and buy it.
Movie Review: Highly Original and Darkly Ironic Take on Chandler
Summary: 5 Stars
This film is rather unusual. When American cinema sets out to adapt a novel for the screen what they normally do is smooth off the sharp edges, make it less dark, sanitize it, make the characters better looking, more squeaky clean, make the ending happier, etc. What Altman does to Chandler is pretty well the very opposite of this, presenting a far bleaker and more pessimistic of Philip Marlow and his world than Chandler does. It's also unusually demanding and literate in that it doesn't simply adapt the book and set out to tell a similar story. It also comments on the book and the central things it says will only succeed in communicating themselves to those who know the book. That fact may go a long way to explaining why the film is rather less well known than it deserves to be. Of course it's about Marlow, a LA private i. who is woken up one night by his old friend Terry Lennox who asks for a lift to Mexico. Marlow complies only to be hauled over the coals by the cops the next day when it turns out Lennox's wife has been murdered. Now Marlow is resolved to prove his friend is innocent... Meanwhile he gets a call from Nina van Pallandt's Ellen Wade who wants him to find her stray husband Roger (Sterling Hayden) and it seems they knew the Lennoxes. Meanwhile too, the psychopathic hoodlum Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell) is squeezing Marlow for the money Lennox owed him... Then the plot thickens. Enough said.
The use of music is rather distinctive and contributes quite a lot to the film's unique feel. There's a slow, jazzy theme song and, much if not all the time, it's the only music we hear. It's not just used as incidental music but dominates the sound environment of the action. When Marlow goes to a bar, it is being played on the piano. When Augustine's girlfriend is waiting for him in his car, she puts the radio on and there it is. And - I liked this touch - when Marlow is in Mexico trying to track Lennox down, we hear it played by the band of a passing funeral...
The acting is excellent. It's the definitive Elliot Gould movie certainly. Sterling Hayden is gloriously on form as huge drunk Roger Wade and Henry Gibson does a brilliantly job in the minor role of a sinister shady doctor exploiting Wade's alcoholism. It is of course beautifully directed and, characteristically for Altman, both very dark and very witty. The mixture of moods is brilliantly handled, from the opening scene, a classic example of Altmanesque comic aimlessness where Marlow goes shopping for the only brand of cat food acceptable to his very fussy pet, stopping to pick up brownie mix for the stoned out hippies next door; to, half an hour later, what, to give nothing away, one might call the Coke Bottle Scene, one of the most explosive and disturbing moments of violence in any movie; to the painfully uncomfortable scene where Wade is confronted by Gibson's nasty Dr Verringer at a beach party; to the devastatingly dark and ironic ending. Enormously worthwhile and utterly unlike any other Chandler adaptation you will ever see, the film is one of Altman's best which is saying a lot. Watch it but, for maximal benefit, it's a particularly good idea to have read the book first.
Movie Review: Post-War Heroism Meets 1970s Los Angeles -With Cynical Results.
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Long Goodbye" is based on Raymond Chandler's novel of the same name, reconceived by screenwriter Leigh Brackett and director Robert Altman, who displace the post-war P.I. Philip Marlowe to 1973, as if he had woken up from a 20-year sleep and found himself among the sun-kissed sybarites of then-modern Los Angeles. Terry Lennox (Jim Burton) implores his old friend Philip Marlowe (Elliot Gould) for a ride to Tijuana in the middle of the night. Terry's in some kind of trouble, so Marlowe obliges. Marlowe is arrested the next day on a trumped up charge by some cops who are sure he must know that Terry bludgeoned his wife to death. Marlowe is then hired by a Mrs. Eileen Wade (Nina von Pallandt), who lives in the same gated beachfront community as the Lennox's did, to find her eccentric alcoholic husband. And Marlowe is threatened by megalomaniac mobster Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell), whose $350,000 Terry made off with.
Marlowe can't escape the mystery of Terry Lennox. The case is pursuing him more than he is inclined to pursue it. Everyone thinks that Marlowe knows something about Terry that he doesn't. That sets the tone for "The Long Goodbye". In contrast to the conventional detective role, Philip Marlowe is the pursued, not the pursuer. He has no control, gets no respect, and has little choice but to investigate his friend's death. To add insult to injury, we're watching. Vilmos Zsigmond's constantly moving camera makes it creepily clear that we are voyeurs of Marlowe's troubles. That onus is a little uncomfortable at times. Robert Altman's focus on behavior adds detail and texture without overwhelming the story. His signature overlapping dialogue serves the chaotic moral climate well. Elliot Gould is fantastic man out of time, smoking and wearing dark suits in the Southern California heat. "The Long Goodbye" is a great neo-noir from that decade of emasculated noir protagonists, the 1970s, when private detectives became anachronisms.
The DVD (MGM 2002): There are 2 featurettes, a theatrical trailer (2 1/2 min), 5 radio ad spots (3 1/2 min, audio), and "'American Cinematographer' Reprint of 1973 Article" (text) by Edward Lipnick, from the March 1973 magazine. This long article is about the use of "post-flashing" to reduce contrast in beach scenes and to increase shadow detail in night scenes. "Rip Van Marlowe" (25 min) features interviews from 2002 with Robert Altman and Elliot Gould. They talk about how the film came to be made, themes, casting, camera movement, directing the actors, and stopping the release of the film to change misleading advertising. "Vilmos Zsigmond Flashes The Long Goodbye" (14 min) is a 2002 interview with cinematographer Zsigmond in which he discusses creating the visual aspect of the film with the production designer and Altman, night shooting, camera movement and "flashing" the film to achieve the desired effects. Subtitles are available for the film in English, French, Spanish. Dubbing available in French.