THE LONG GOODBYE, Robert Altman (1973) / Marlowe, gumshoe knight of L.A.

Private detective Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is asked by his old buddy Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) for a ride to Mexico. He obliges, and when he gets back to Los Angeles is questioned by police about the death of Terry's wife. Marlowe remains a suspect until it's reported that Terry has committed suicide in Mexico. Marlowe doesn't buy it but takes a new case from a beautiful blonde, Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt), who coincidentally has a past with Terry.

Directed by Robert Altman
Screenplay: Leigh Brackett
Based on The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
Produced by Jerry Bick
Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond
Edited by Lou Lombardo
Music: John Williams
Release date: 7 March 1973
Running time: 1h 52m

HOW THIS WORKS
To find out where to rent or stream The Long Goodbye online, visit TV.Movie. Watch it on your own during the week and then join us for our Zoom conversation Saturday, September 13. A Zoom link will appear on the right of your screen once you RSVP. (NOTE: If you can’t get that link to work, copy and paste it into the search bar of your browser.) First-timers must sign up no later than Friday 9/12 in order to ensure being admitted.

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Time to get on board! The centennial year train of American maverick director Robert Altman will leave the station in December, and you're invited to come along for the ride. But be forewarned: In The Long Goodbye, as in most of Altman's work, fidelity to source material is a relatively minor concern. Here the exploits of Philip Marlowe are updated from the glamor of Hollywood in the '40s to the more dissipated '70s, the decade when this film was shot. Thus Altman is as interested in commenting on his immediate environment as he is giving us Raymond Chandler's hero.

The result is what one apt observer termed a "satirical neo-noir," and the first job of a viewer is to sift out the realistic elements from the skewed. For the latter? Cast an arriviste celebrity, a relatively unknown comedian, and a scandalous ex-ballplayer – check. Have your hero chain smoke but never finish a cigarette – check. Mystify us with a chorus of topless nymphs trilling on the balcony across the courtyard – check. Shock us with sudden savagery – check. In all these cases, Altman presses pause on the meaning of "movie" in order to favor incident or scenario for their own sake, turning the camera on human beings in their idiosyncrasies and away from the drive toward narrative conclusion. We're led to question whatever we think we know of a character's motives and to wait upon the next disclosure, with only an indeterminate faceless disorientation to keep us company. It's not a pretty picture, but then L.A. seldom is. At least Marlowe gets a harmonica melody to play on the way out.

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TRAILER, RATINGS, EXTRA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbBq2xJJBU8

Rotten Tomatoes: Tomatometer 95% of 57 reviews
Metacritic: Metascore 87 ("universal acclaim") based on 17 reviews, Must See

The Long Goodbye received mixed to positive reviews upon release, but its critical assessment has grown over time. In 2021, the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

BLURBS & ATTITUDES
The Long Goodbye attacks film noir with three of Altman's most cherished tools: whimsy, spontaneity, and narrative perversity. He is always the most youthful of directors, and here he gives us the youngest of Philip Marlowes, the private eye as a Hardy boy. Marlowe hides in the bushes, pokes his nose up against a window, complains like a spoiled child, and runs after a car driven by the sexy heroine, crying out “Mrs. Wade! Mrs. Wade!” As a counterweight, the movie contains two startling acts of violence; both blindside us, and neither is in the original Raymond Chandler novel. ∞ Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Philip Marlowe, that laconic loner with a code of honor, becomes what Altman and Gould privately called “Rip Van Marlowe.” When he awakens at the beginning of the movie, he’s a 1953 character in a 1973 world. He wears a dark suit, white shirt and narrow tie in a world of flower power and nude yoga. He chain-smokes; no one else smokes. He is loyal to Terry Lennox and considers him his friend, but the movie establishes their friendship only by showing them playing liar’s poker, and Lennox is no friend. Marlowe carries a $5,000 bill for most of the movie, but never charges for any of his services. He is a knight errant, and like Don Quixote imperfectly understands the world he inhabits. ∞ Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

The Long Goodbye should not be anybody’s first film noir, nor their first Altman movie. Most of its effect comes from the way it pushes against the genre, and the way Altman undermines the premise of all private eye movies, which is that the hero can walk down mean streets, see clearly, and tell right from wrong. The man of honor from 1953 is lost in the hazy narcissism of 1973, and it’s not all right with him. ∞ Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

Don't be misled by the ads. The Long Goodbye is not a put-on. It's great fun and it's funny, but it's a serious, unique work. ∞ Vincent Canby, New York Times

Raymond Chandler’s sentimental foolishness is the taking-off place for Robert Altman’s heady, whirling sideshow of a movie, set in the early-seventies L.A. of the stoned sensibility. Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is a wryly forlorn knight, just slogging along; still driving a 1948 Lincoln Continental and trying to behave like Bogart, he’s the gallant fool in a corrupt world—the innocent eye. Even the police know more about the case he’s involved in than he does. Yet he’s the only one who cares. Altman tells a detective story all right, but he does it through a spree—a highflying rap on Chandler and L.A. and the movies. Altman gracefully kisses off the private-eye form in soft, mellow color and volatile images; the cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond is responsible for the offhand visual pyrotechnics (the imagery has great vitality). Gould gives a loose and woolly, strikingly original performance. ∞ Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

Altman spoke of "Rip Van Marlowe", seeing his hero as a man sleepwalking into a later era and trying to make sense of its amorality, decadence and lack of values, though this is only an exaggerated form of the fictional California the disillusioned Chandler made his own .... Superbly photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond in a desaturated colour that echoes a bygone age, The Long Goodbye is an elegant, chilly, deliberately heartless movie. A masterpiece of sorts, it digs beneath the surface of the supposedly liberated spirit of the times to expose the ethos that took America into the Vietnam war and produced Watergate. In pushing the cynical idealist Marlowe over the edge it ends up true to the spirit of Chandler. ∞ Philip French, The Guardian

Robert Altman’s 1973 adaptation of pulp legend Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel The Long Goodbye is simultaneously an act of revisionism as well as a parody of the then-nascent neo-noir revival ... in Altman’s Los Angeles of Hemingway wannabes, thousand-dollar-a-day psychiatric playground retreats, Barbara Stanwyck-impersonating parking attendants, cats with gourmet tastes, and aficionados of naked yoga with a penchant for pot brownies, Marlowe’s persona isn’t only a relic, it’s practically uncool ... Still, for all the film’s revisionism, one tenet of the noir genre remains a holdover, existing in Altman’s film without revision or irony. For a man to be betrayed by another man when the two held a previously honorable agreement is a moral crime, punishable by death. However, when a man is betrayed by a woman—in Marlowe’s case, when he’s played for a patsy by the woman he thought was as sweet and soft as the dried apricots she served him—it’s so taken for granted and upsets his worldview so little, it’s hardly worth a whistling tune on the harmonica. ∞ Eric Henderson, Slant