The Long Goodbye (Widescreen)

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.

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.