Customer Reviews

The Long Goodbye (Widescreen)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

Like a lot of Altman's films, I liked this much better on a second viewing. It's a fascinating mix of both heartfelt homage, and style twisting parody and re-imagining of film noir, with a great performance by Sterling Hayden, a very good one by Mark Rydell, and a solid one by Elliott Gould. A lot of it is quite funny and entertaining, but there's a sad, almost tragic side under all the hip irony. The ending is powerful, if a bit rushed. I'd put this among Altman's best films, but as I said, it took a second look to get there. Hard to believe this modern classic, like so many others, is out of print.

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.

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.

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 "The Terminator" in a non-speaking role.

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."

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 consists of a single tune played over and over by different performers.

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."

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.

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.

One of the best of Altman's anti-genre genre films, this is a picture that I did not completely understand on first viewing, but after six times, I'm only beginning to become aware of its incredible originality and beauty. (It's also a very funny film at times.)

If you want plot details, check other reviews here, but what I appreciate most about this Marlowe parody is the presentation. When you get down to it, the plot has nothing to say, even though it will keep you guessing and surprise you at the end. This is a film that 21st-century Hollywood would never allow to see the light of day; it's too original and not dumbed-down enough.

There is much to admire here, and here are just a few things I love about "The Long Goodbye":

Vilmos Zsigmond's photography is nothing less than astounding. Flashing the film provides for many subtle shades of lighting and contrast; likewise, the restless camera never stops moving; there is not one stationary shot in this entire film. There is a shot of the Sterling Hayden character arguing with his wife, shot from *outside* the house through glass; in the glass we see the reflection of Elliot Gould, waiting on the beach. This is a great use of visuals, and would not be permissable in Hollywood today.

Mark Rydell, playing Marty Augustine, is hilarious. His delivery and gesturing are top-notch for a non-actor. Just look at the way he delivers the line "You're friend was a murderer; he murdered his wife."

Altman's style here has never been better used. Yes, there is the occasional overlapping dialogue, but it's held in restraint rather than overblown as in "M*A*S*H" or "McCabe" (even though those are both brilliant in their own way). The constant camera motion and zooming are done so subtly it draws the viewer in and doesn't for a second seem like a gimmick.

Those are just a few things to enjoy in this film. Watch it, then watch it again. The rewards are many, and more of them appear with each viewing. A true, original, and very sly masterpiece. They just don't make 'em like this anymore.