The Long Goodbye
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Movie Reviews of The Long Goodbye
Movie Review: Gumshoe, '60's Style
Summary: 5 Stars
The screenplay (Leigh Brackett) of The Long Good-bye is unusually well thought out and coherent. For a private-eye movie, that's an exception, and I suspect it's that very tightness which forced the famously anarchic Altman into a disciplined groove. It also helped produce this, his most accomplished, film. Then too, only an audacious film-maker of Altman's calibre could have brought such an irreverent approach to the screen.Small wonder Chandler purists detest this 1960's version of Phillip Marlowe. Like others of that period, the film sets about subverting an icon of the popular culture. Elliot Gould's Marlowe is anything but the hard-boiled professional audiences have come to admire and expect. Instead, he's grubby, feckless, and seemingly too disengaged to care about Chandler's prized passion: chasing after truth despite an uncaring corrupt society. Worse, one suspects Gould's Marlowe is a hippie at heart, ready to chuck it all and head for the woods with his beloved cat, a load of pot, and a world-weary "Its OK with me". Moreover, he's tossed about by most every event that comes his way, too burned-out to complete a thought and too bummed-out to press an investigation. He can't even find his cat. The slouching gait and hang-dog expression have all the assurance and verve of a man headed for a hanging. Bogart's classic impersonation, it ain't.
But Altman has laid a trap, one that only comes into focus at film's end. It's a startling yet oddly believable turn of events. Head doctors term this type of reconfiguration Gestalt Shift, and here the shift is a rewarding one, causing us to go back and re-examine the Gould character and his passage through what has gone before. It's also a brilliant stroke which at last links the counter-cultural Marlowe to the classic version. There are many fine touches in the film, including a highly effective use of sudden violence, particularly runty Henry Gibson's slam-bang humbling of lordly Sterling Hayden (he knows about drunks). And, for once, Altman's penchant for non-actors like Jim Bouton does little damage, although I wish the ending had skipped the ill-advised "Hooray for Hollywood". Nonetheless, this is one of the half dozen or so films that define counter-cultural film-making from the 60's. However, Its key Southern California ambience is best viewed, as other reviewers point out, in wide-screen. So catch up with that mode if you can.
Movie Review: Didn't enjoy this film; I recommend: rent before you buy.
Summary: 2 Stars
Been a long time fan of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, consider it one of the great films of the '70s, and bought the disc with pleasure. So last week I rented 3 Women based on the reviews of that film here and absolutely loved it; an incredibly surreal and strange film. So I ordered it, and then decided to explore a few other '70s Altman films. Based on those reviews I decided to add The Long Goodbye with my order of 3 Women, expecting that I would enjoy both. But I couldn't wait, so I rented The Long Goodbye too and watched it last night. Suffice it to say, I didn't like it, but fortunately the order hadn't shipped so I was able to cancel The Long Goodbye in time and will just receive 3 Women from that order. What didn't I like? Well, the scene setups are very cliche. In one scene Marlow and Ellen Wade are talking by a window. Altman separates each on both sides of the frame with the ocean behind the window in the center frame out of focus. Then there's movement in the window. The camera zooms past both Marlow and Wade to the scene past the window with both continuing their conversation and you see Wade's husband throw himself into the ocean in suicide. Great camera work, but the acting is played so deadpan by both that given the circumstances it just didn't seem believable. Gould's Marlow faces numerous situations where he plays it so deadpan it just didn't work for me, that's just one example.
And the ending, far from being a shocker, simply played out an obvious violent outcome that today wouldn't be the slightest bit outrageous. And yes, I recognize that the shocker is moral and not just a shock from violence. Maybe society today has simple degenerated over the last 30 years WRT accepting violent imagery. But it just didn't work for me either as a shocker or as a satisfactory conclusion to the story line. Honestly, Chinatown is a much better early '70s take on Noir and IMO eclipses this film by far.
Now I admit, I haven't read the Chandler book, nor have I seen The Big Sleep in a long, long time. So I don't have the context to properly review this film from a historical perspective. My review is strictly based on a single viewing last night where I walked away from the film disappointed after having expected to much more based on the reviews here. By all means, if you're exploring Altman films do rent this picture. Watch it. Then based on that decide if it's appropriate for your collection. If so, buy it with pleasure. But I can't honestly recommend buying this film based on the reviews here alone.
Movie Review: Oh Great! I'm Gonna Have That Song In My Head All Day!
Summary: 4 Stars
Robert Altman is notorious for having plenty of movement in all his films. This one is no exception. The transplantation to the 70's seems weird, but it's the story that really sets it apart. Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe is played with such awkwardness by Gould. I loved his chain smoking, anywhere he can get the chance. Sterling Hayden should have been nominated for an Oscar for this performance. I also got a kick out of seeing Arnold "The Terminator" Schwarzenegger in a non-speaking role.Movie Review: For a brief, shining moment in the '70s, Gould was king
Summary: 4 Stars
Director Robert Altman can find a sublimely goofy sort of humor in almost any setting, and he does so here. For one thing, the musical score primarily consists of a single tune played over and over by different performers in different arrangements.What's amazing is how well this self-conscious jokiness fits with the bleak motivations of the flick's traditionally noir characters.
Gould's Everyman-ish anti-Marlowe is one you'd actually like to hang out with. He's just as good with cats as with comebacks, for instance.
If you've ever wondered how someone like Elliott Gould could be the top box-office draw in America for a short period in the 1970s, you should give "The Long Goodbye" a look. For a brief, shining moment, the man was king.
As Marlowe says, "It's OK with me."
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.