The way a film starts can tell you a lot about where it's going. When Marlowe stumbles out of bed, mumbling and beholden to a mewing feline, you know you will not witness a typical translation of Chandler's work. I had reservations before seeing this movie the first time, worried, as I was, that Altman, by taking liberties with the novel upon which its based, was somehow mocking the source material. I was wrong. The Long Goodbye isn't a loyal translation of the novel, in terms of narrative, but it maintains the spirit, at least, and updates it for a new era. It's as cynical as Chandler's novel, but it's a different (and, perhaps, more justified) cynicism. If anything, Altman chose not to mock the source so much as to mock the continuing glut of crime films that refused to update their heroes for a post-Kennedy, post-King, Vietnam world.
What happens when you take a retro gumshoe and drop them into the southern California of the early 1970s? They seem distinctly out of place. They don't seem to get it and, as a result, they find themselves in a lot of trouble. Marlowe, in this version of the Long Goodbye, spends much of his time as a fish out of water. He's fairly ineffective as a private detective, though he does achieve a certain amount of success finding Roger Wade and deducing what truly happened with Terry Lennox. He's stumbling in the dark for enough of the film, though, to make his successes seem the product of chance, not skill. Some may call this the inversion of the genre--I would say, however, that Altman takes a familiar genre and all its trappings but places it anachronistically in the then-present to show the failure of the genre's tropes to universally translate.
Without the Long Goodbye, would there have been a Chinatown? A Farewell My Lovely? Perhaps, but Altman's masterful rendition certainly paved the way for those arguably more successful pictures.
In addition to upsetting a genre, though, the Long Goodbye contains an amazing performance by Elliot Gould, who more or less carries the film by himself (no one else has enough screen time), as well as a marvelous turn by Sterling Hayden, who seems to channel Ernest Hemmingway and Raymond Chandler simultaneously. The other supporting roles are filled with equally effective performances. There is also the sun- drenched photography. The Long Goodbye might be a noir, but it's not particularly dark, in terms of its colors. Much of the action takes place in the daylight, which, I think, makes it all the more ominous.
All in all, this is a fantastic film and one of Altman's best.
What happens when you take a retro gumshoe and drop them into the southern California of the early 1970s? They seem distinctly out of place. They don't seem to get it and, as a result, they find themselves in a lot of trouble. Marlowe, in this version of the Long Goodbye, spends much of his time as a fish out of water. He's fairly ineffective as a private detective, though he does achieve a certain amount of success finding Roger Wade and deducing what truly happened with Terry Lennox. He's stumbling in the dark for enough of the film, though, to make his successes seem the product of chance, not skill. Some may call this the inversion of the genre--I would say, however, that Altman takes a familiar genre and all its trappings but places it anachronistically in the then-present to show the failure of the genre's tropes to universally translate.
Without the Long Goodbye, would there have been a Chinatown? A Farewell My Lovely? Perhaps, but Altman's masterful rendition certainly paved the way for those arguably more successful pictures.
In addition to upsetting a genre, though, the Long Goodbye contains an amazing performance by Elliot Gould, who more or less carries the film by himself (no one else has enough screen time), as well as a marvelous turn by Sterling Hayden, who seems to channel Ernest Hemmingway and Raymond Chandler simultaneously. The other supporting roles are filled with equally effective performances. There is also the sun- drenched photography. The Long Goodbye might be a noir, but it's not particularly dark, in terms of its colors. Much of the action takes place in the daylight, which, I think, makes it all the more ominous.
All in all, this is a fantastic film and one of Altman's best.