The Long Goodbye
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Movie Reviews of The Long Goodbye
Movie Review: Buy it for film library!
Summary: 5 Stars
You really need to own this film. It's truly a solid film in so many different ways. Robert Altman is a superb director. Elliot Gould plays a truly excellent detective who was betrayed by a 'friend' who has ruthlessly murdered a woman. He can't believe that the man he knew was capable of this crime. How did he become the hood that works for Marty Augustine? In the final scene he is chided by the Terry, "Who cares!" Marlowe remarks, "I care", and kills him with a bullet. Was it his disgust with him? Or a sense of betrayal?
Mrs. Wade draws the wrong conclusions about Marlowe after he sits in jail for three days. Early in the film Marlowe tells Mrs. Wade that he doesn't do divorce work but her husband departed before she could separate or divorce from him. So she hires Marlowe to find him and bring him home. When Roger Wade returns home with Marlowe he must be wondering is there a chance to save the marriage? It's those first minutes with his wife that tell him nothing has changed. Like Terry Lennox, Roger Wade has changed. He's no longer the man that his wife married and wants.
He complains to Mrs. Lennox who is determined to put a stop to matters and killed by her own husband when she threatens to go to the police. At the police station Lt. Farmer asked Marlowe how come he knows so little about his friends? He places his trust in them but loyalty carries a price. Was it merely co-incidence? Marlowe receives five thousand bills from Marty Augustine and Terry Lennox for 'his troubles'. Didn't it simply confirm the doubts that had been growing in his mind about a good friend and the crime that he had committed?
Not for Marlowe fans or kids. They'll be disappointed.
Movie Review: Altman's best film to date...
Summary: 5 Stars
Raymond Chandler's novel of the same name and the studio had no idea how to market the offbeat movie. It polarized critics and promptly disappeared from theatres. However, the film has survived on video and television, but only in a compromised pan and scan version that butchered Vilmos Zsigmond's superb 2.35:1 widescreen camerawork. Finally, The Long Goodbye receives a proper DVD treatment that it so richly deserves.The Long Goodbye is much more than a murder mystery. Taking Chandler's novel set in the 1940s and updating it to the 1970s, Altman is also interested in satirizing the superficiality of Los Angeles culture. Marlowe is surrounded by an odd cast of denizens that populate the city: his neighbours are a group of women who spend their time getting high and doing yoga, the security guard for the Wade's estate does impersonations of famous actors like Barbara Stanwyk and Jimmy Stewart, and a nasty gangster who is proud of his Jewish heritage.
The stand-out amongst the extras on this DVD is the "Rip Van Marlowe" featurette. It runs about 24-minute and is an excellent retrospective look at the movie. Robert Altman and Elliot Gould are interviewed and talk about how they got involved with the project. Both men provide all sorts of fascinating information and are refreshingly candid.
The Long Goodbye is one of the best examples of American cinema in the '70s and now it is finally available on DVD in its original aspect ratio. MGM has produced a top-notch transfer and a solid collection of supplemental material that should appeal to fans of the movie and newcomers who are looking for something a little different.
Movie Review: The New Marlow
Summary: 5 Stars
The thing that strikes you when you when you first sit down with this film is, "Elliot Gould as PHILLIP MARLOW?? Didn't Bogey nail that role so well that he owns it?"Well, he does and he doesn't. Gould is a brilliant casting-against-type, and Altman admits in the supplemental materials that it was this casting that finally drew him to the film.
Gould's Marlow is subtle, understated, and very casual. He spends most of the movie giving the impression that nothing gets to him, that he is above all the lunacy that goes on around him. Yet, in the end we see that his moral foundation runs very deep, and his sense of justice is stronger than his malaise.
Altman's direction is the true star of this film. As is said in other reviews, this film only works in widescreen. It's a stylistic triumph, and the camera work is particularly evocative. Viewing this film today, we might see these unsteady, roaming images as passe, but in 1973 this technique was groundbreaking. [It disturbed the critics so much that they didn't "get it" (of course, they didn't "get" 2001 either...).] Yet, Altman's treatment - so new in 1974 - is actually far more mature than most of what passes for modern cinematography today.
It will take you about 15 minutes to make peace with Gould's Marlow, but only one minute to realize you are in the presence of something very special. This is one of those buried jems waiting for your discovery.
Relish it.
Movie Review: Continuing The Altman Journey
Summary: 5 Stars
Robert Altman, the great American film director, made 35 feature films. The Long Goodbye, based on a Raymond Chandler detective story, was one that I saw for the first time. The film was filmed in Los Angeles in 1973,but he places it in 1950s LA when the book was written. It stars Elliott Gould, an actor who was on the black list of the Hollywood studios for failing to complete his latest film, as Philip Marlowe. The studio system was alive and well in 1973, but Altman worked largely outside that system. Rather than insisting that his own vision always prevail, Altman gave great freedom to the actors and photographers he hired. As a result, actors and other creative people loved to work for him and sometimes worked for free.
Don't miss the special features on this DVD, which give great insight into Altman's modus operandi.
In a previous review, I compared Altman's approach to making films with that of Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick's films are all excellent, but you always know that you are watching a Kubrick film. Altman's films are unique in that they also reflect the varied viewpoints of the actors and others making the film.
Movie Review: Brilliant, but not for the Chandler purists! (See the 1-star reviews for much teeth-gnashing from the anti-Altman camp)
Summary: 5 Stars
The truth is that Raymond Chandler purists who have a rigid view of his work are never going to like this brilliant little film. One has to be able to understand the artistic merit inherent in variation, parody, and reimagining. The fact that several reviewers gave this film ONE star out of five tells me one of these things are true: 1. These folks have an axe to grind and they let that get in the way of seeing this film for what it is, or 2. They sincerely have no taste. Or very, very limited taste. Oh, a third alternative just occurred to me: 3. Hollywood has ruined these people's brains, such that they can no longer appreciate a wider spectrum of pace in a film; everything needs to happen in a rapid-fire, linear fashion replete with gunfire and explosions every few minutes or they get bored because they are accustomed to having filmmakers cater to their short attention span and high tolerance for violence.
Sorry, soul cats. Try again. Or, rather, don't post vindictive and shallow reviews. Your reviews reveal more about you than they do about the movies you write about. Don't you realize this?