![]() Many Philip Marlowes have graced the film and TV screens over the years, from Dick Powell to Humphrey Bogart to Robert Mitchum to James Garner to Powers Boothe. Of all the potential actors to play Raymond Chandler’s tough yet moral Los Angeles-based private eye, I think it’s safe to say Elliot Gould would hardly be the first name to leap to people’s minds. With his rubbery face, beetle brows and slouchy, hip persona, Gould seems an odd fit for the “tarnished knight” audiences were used to seeing on screen. Yet surprisingly, he makes a solid lead in Robert Altman’s tribute to/ deconstruction of the gumshoe genre, The Long Goodbye. That Gould works so well is partly due to Altman’s insistence on updating the 1940s-set story to the contemporary 70s; his hangdog, mumble-mouthed approach to the famous sleuth seems a better fit for the Los Angeles of the 1970s, with its naked pothead hippie chick neighbors, swanky Malibu beach parties, quack psychotherapists and Nixon-era disillusionment. The movie opens in a relaxed, idiosyncratic fashion. We see Marlowe dealing with his insistently hungry yet finicky cat and heading out to the grocery store in the middle of the night to get it some food (along with some brownie mix for his spaced-out neighbors). Alternating with this are scenes of Marlowe’s pal Terry Lennox tooling his way through the city streets on his way to ask Marlowe for what will turn out to be a very costly favor. An interesting touch here is how several forms of the John Williams/Johnny Mercer theme song is heard in each location. We get the theme tune proper playing on Marlowe’s car radio, which shuts off when Marlowe turns off the ignition but returns in Muzak form in the supermarket scene. We also hear the tune, this time sung by a female vocalist, in Lennox’s car. Other than one other song played over the end credits (“Hooray for Hollywood”), all music in the movie follows this diagetic pattern, each version a different arrangement of “The Long Goodbye” theme. It’s a somewhat unusual approach and gives the film a kind of subliminal, thematic unity. After Marlowe tries unsuccessfully to fool his cat into accepting another brand of cat food (cat owners around the world will instantly relate to this scenario), Lennox arrives at his place. A note here about Marlowe’s P.I. bachelor pad. It’s at the top of an apartment building in what seems to be some part of the Hollywood Hills, with a bank of big picture windows featuring a view of not only the frequently topless wannabe starlets next door, but also a panoramic vista of L.A. itself. In this respect if in nothing else, Marlowe’s lot in life seems to have improved. ![]() Lennox tells Marlowe he had another fight with his rich wife, Sylvia. Marlowe greets his old buddy enthusiastically, and offers his couch for the night. But Lennox has something else in mind: he wants Marlowe to drive him to the Mexican border at Tijuana. The loyal Marlowe complies. A tired Marlowe returns home from his long drive and is promptly accosted by a pair of homicide detectives. Seems Lennox’s wife has been murdered and Marlowe is pegged as an accessory after the fact. Marlowe refuses to tell the cops where he took Lennox and is thrown in the slammer for three whole days for his trouble (he shares his cell with a chatty con, played by a young David Carradine). He’s shocked to learn upon his release that Lennox has apparently killed himself in a Mexican hotel, a seeming admission of his guilt. A disbelieving Marlowe gets involved in another case that, in true detective story fashion, turns out to be intimately intertwined with the Sylvia Lennox murder. He’s hired by the Lennoxes' stunning blonde neighbor, Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt) to track down her missing husband, famous novelist Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden). Marlowe finds Wade easily enough, holed up in Dr. Verringer’s shady clinic, and sensing a scam on Verringer’s part, escorts the drunk and depressed Wade back to his wife. Rather taken by the sensuous beauty of Mrs. Wade, and concerned for the mental state of Roger, Marlowe agrees to keep an eye on things for his usual fee of "$50 a day and expenses." Marlowe can’t seem to catch a break; every time he returns to his apartment he gets another nasty surprise. The next one comes in the form of brutish gangster Marty Augustine, who says that Lennox ran off with $350,000 of his money and that he holds Marlowe personally responsible for getting the cash back.
Things get even more complicated for Marlowe when he finds a brief “thank you” note from Lennox in his mailbox, along with a $5,000 bill (clearly part of Augustine's missing cash). Even though Gould’s Marlowe is in some ways cut from a different, more hip and modern cloth than the norm, he still epitomizes the sort of dogged, honorable character that’s determined to get to the bottom of the case, no matter the risk to himself. The Long Goodbye is directed in the typically naturalistic, almost accidental Altman style. Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography seems deliberately dark and soft-focused, perhaps partly to capture a bit of a nostalgic feel, reflective of Altman’s take on the Marlowe character as out of step with his time, and also in what seems to be the director’s penchant for using natural lighting as much as possible. Altman makes good use of the Wades’ rambling beach house location (actually Altman’s own home at the time), and films several scenes through its windowpanes, where the dialogue is still audible, yet Zsigmond is able to achieve some interesting mirroring and distancing effects using the reflective qualities of the glass. Sci-fi novelist and veteran screenwriter Leigh Brackett (who co-wrote the 1946 The Big Sleep with William Faulkner and Jules Furthman) wrote the script for Goodbye, but with all the improvisation going on, especally by Gould and Hayden, who knows how much of the final product, other than the basic plot construction, can be credited to her. In keeping with Altman’s patented “overlapping dialogue” style (seen to good effect in Nashville and The Player), Gould keeps a running, mumbled patter going almost nonstop. He’s basically his own Greek chorus, commenting on the absurdity of the situations he finds himself in, as well as verbally fencing with the various characters he comes into contact with throughout the story. (This reminds me of the similarly-handled, muttering character of McCabe (Warren Beatty) in Altman's earlier McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Gould has many funny moments, including this priceless bit with Harry, a newbie henchmen of Augustine assigned to follow him:
![]() One of Gould’s constant refrains is “That’s OK with me.” His Marlowe, though constantly put-upon, threatened, tricked and lied to, doesn’t seem to take any of this ill treatment personally, and is laid-back almost to a fault. But when it comes to the film’s controversial ending, when he puts everything together and confronts the real killer, we see that he is indeed a man of deep feeling, and that there are some things he just won’t bear. How this finale plays out is a radical departure from the novel, one that to this day divides Chandler purists and fans alike. It also happens to be one of the most remarkable aspects of the movie. The final shots cleverly echo the 1949 Carol Reed classic, The Third Man. Gould is in virtually every scene of the movie and anchors it with a shambling, lived-in performance, tossing off flippant one-liners and knowing asides with aplomb. In a nice touch that illustrates the character's roots in an earlier, less health-obsessed era, his Marlowe is constantly lighting up, smoking or otherwise rolling a cigarette around his mouth. Dressed in a dark blue suit and loose red tie, driving an old Lincoln Continental convertible, and with his unique code of honor and incorruptibility, his is a dishevilled yet worthy descendant of previous cinema Marlowes. Nina Van Pallandt is quite good in the icy blond femme fatale role, properly alluring, mysterious and unobtainable. Sterling Hayden is striking in the small but showy part of the alcoholic Roger Wade. A big bear of a man, Hayden plays Wade as a troubled Hemingway-type figure, flailing away at fate and his dimming powers as a man and a writer. Apparently, Hayden was Altman’s second choice for the role. He wanted Dan Blocker, Hoss of Bonanza fame, which seems something of an odd choice to me but might have worked out fine; Blocker was good as the Moose Malloyesque figure in the Tony Rome sequel, Lady in Cement (1968), but I can't picture him bringing to the part the kind of vulnerability and broken-down dignity Hayden does. ![]() Former pro baseball player and sports writer Jim Bouton isn’t in the film much but does a fine job as Terry Lennox. Director and sometimes actor Mark Rydell is fun as the vicious little rooster of a mobster, Augustine. The scene where he bashes his mistress in the face with a Coke bottle just to prove a point to Marlowe is nastily effective. (“Her, I love. You, I don’t even like.”) An uncredited Arnold Schwarzenegger has a non-speaking scene late in the film as one of Rydell’s goons. And Henry Gibson is typically weaselly as the scheming Dr. Verringer. In my opinion, the best incarnations of Chandler's character and hard-boiled world remain Dick Powell's dramatic career makeover, the stylish Murder, My Sweet (1944), and the terrific Howard Hawks' version of The Big Sleep (1946), with a perfectly cast Humphrey Bogart. That said, I enjoy all of the Marlowe films, including the first person POV experiment of Robert Montgomery in Lady in the Lake (1947), the drowsy-eyed Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely (1975), and James Garner in the sunny 60s update of The Little Sister, Marlowe (1969). Despite its occasionally diffuse nature and Altman's iconoclastic inclinations, The Long Goodbye fits in nicely with these other entertaining adaptations. It's a consistently engaging and atmospheric detective story, and despite its groovy 70s trappings, remains a respectable take on the old-fashioned private eye tale. DVD Note: MGM's Region 1 DVD of The Long Goodbye is now out-of-print and going for an exorbitant price on Amazon.com; what I assume is the same transfer can be had for cheap from Region 2. The image on the Region 1 copy is soft and often dark; how much of that is a by-product of the original filming, or a shortcoming of the DVD mastering, I have no idea. It's certainly watchable and at least anamorphically enhanced.
"Nobody cares but me."
Jeff
7/7/2012 04:04:49 pm
Hello Clayton,
Jeff, I never liked this movie at all either. I have to agree with Clayton though, you've done a hell of a job selling it.
Jeff
7/7/2012 04:20:24 pm
Hi Colin, 7/6/2012 06:15:08 am
Terrific review Jeff and let me the first to stick up for the movie from those of us replying. I love Chandler and I love Chandler adaptations - not too crazy about the ones starring the Montgomery boys and I could live without the Michael Winner version of THE BIG SLEEP even if it is much truer to the novel than Hawks ever was - but they all have something of value. But to me THE LONG GOODBYE is a true classic of 70s cinema, from Zsigmond's pastel shades achieves by pre- and post-flashing the negative to its violent ending (which incidentally was in Brackett's draft even before Altman inherited the project from Brian G. Hutton) which seems so at odds with Chandler's original but which i think is just right for the film, without betraying the melancholy tone of the book at all. It works superbly on its own terms as a 70s reflection on the artificiality of the Hollywood Noir of the 40s refracted through the disenchantment of the Nixon era and I think Gould is quite superb in it. I would disagree though that Altman's technique is chaotic - rather, I believe it only gives that impression, being quite carefully controlled and constructed, the elaborate camera moves very carefully matching the choreographed action. The film is in fact impeccably put together (just look closely at the editing in the horrible scene with the coke bottle to see how the effect is achieved). I have the region 1 DVD and had no idea it was so rare - the extra include nice interviews with Gould, Zsigmond and Altman, who makes a classic blunder when he recounts that sadly Brackett died before the film was completed - she in fact died in 1979 and lived long enough to write the early drafts of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK!
Sergio, you and Jeff ~almost~ make me wish I could like it!
Jeff
7/7/2012 04:34:11 pm
Thanks kindly, Sergio!
Jeff
7/7/2012 04:37:14 pm
That's very kind of you to say, R.A. - thanks! There were a lot of good quotes in THE LONG GOODBYE, so it was a bit difficult to select the right ones. Even the film's detractors might have some kind things to say about the script. 7/7/2012 06:32:11 pm
Brackett at the time had only published one crime novel under her own name, NO GOOD FROM A CORPSE, which is a good read but very much an emulation of Chandler, so it's not hard to see why they asked her to adapt THE BOG SLEEP. Might see about reviewing over at my blog sometime as it's been a couple of years since I read it. The John Brahm version of THE HIGH WINDOW is perfectly entertaining and is reasonably faithful to the book (and even has Marlowe smoking a pipe) - it's just that Montgomery is intrinsically light-weight. Equally, I quite like the LADY IN THE LAKE movie, I'm just not sold of Montgomery in the role (what little you see of him - I really like Lloyd Nolan as the corrupt cop though and Audrey Totter was just gorgeous!). In an article from 1974 for TAKE ONE magazine, after the film's release, Brackett wrote:
Jeff
7/8/2012 10:16:58 pm
Thanks for that, Sergio! I'm curious about those Bracket detective novels...hope you do get around to writing a post on them someday. Sounds like Brackett was pretty pleased with the way the GOODBYE turned out, so maybe they didn't mess with her script TOO much.
I do realise you're attempting a thoughtful defence, but we're talking about Philip Marlowe, not Batman. Batman was never played Bogart or Dick Powell, for one, Batman is a comic book character made most famous on screen with ZAP! BIFF! POW!!!, and uhh...Jack Reacher who???. We are talking Philip Marlowe...there are no reasonable words to justify casting Elliott Gould.
Dan
7/9/2012 09:18:54 pm
Altman's take on THE LONG GOODBYE was the only viable approach In the 70s, when noir was still out of style and the PI had long-ago been supplanted by the Secret Agent. The ending offered an intriguing slant on the "loser" mentality of the films of that time (which I've commented on before) and Mark Rydell's Marty Augustine was a riveting variation on one of Chandler's most colorful characters. Next to feeble efforts like MARLOWE this is a real gem, and it can stand beside films like PJ and GUNN as worthy entries in a tradition that was going through lean times.
Jeff
7/10/2012 10:59:36 pm
Hey there, Dan! I'm inclined to agree with you re: this film's approach fitting the 70s setting well. Interesting point about the "loser" mentality in 70s film, I can definitely see what you're getting at there. I saw the movie last week. Anyways I am glad that I am getting to read the reviews of the movie through this page. This page is doing a great job by providing some quality reviews about the movie. Thanks a lot for the update. I would like to revisit this page often. Comments are closed.
|
Videophilia!
Opinionated ramblings about new and old movies (mostly old, as that's the way I like 'em!) Blogs of Note
Stuart Galbraith IV's World Cinema Paradise
Movie Morlocks (TCM's Classic Movie Blog) 50 Westerns from the 50s Riding the High Country Sweet Freedom Tipping My Fedora Thrilling Days of Yesteryear Silver Screenings Laura's Miscellaneous Musings Classic TV and Film Cafe Just a Cineast She Blogged By Night Chess, Comics, Crosswords, Books, Music, Cinema Out of the Past - A Classic Film Blog Pretty Sinister Books They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To In So Many Words... Greenbriar Picture Shows Flix Chatter My Love of Old Hollywood Tales of the Easily Distracted Another Old Movie Blog Lasso the Movies Kevin's Movie Corner Films From Beyond the Time Barrier Carole & Co. Rupert Pupkin Speaks Caftan Woman Vienna's Classic Hollywood The Lady Eve's Reel Life ClassicBecky's Brain Food Hey!
Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed below, to be informed of new postings! Categories
All
Archives
September 2015
|