The Long Goodbye   Nothing says goodbye like a bullet.

Robert Altman’s 1973 “tribute” to film noir, and most importantly, Raymond Chandler, is a true classic. “The Long Goodbye” was the penultimate mystery novel from Chandler, and Altman created a brilliant “new wave” mystery thriller that changed the genre, although strongly offending Chandler purists.

The Altman re-working tells the tale of Chain-smoking, wisecracking private eye Philip Marlowe who gets caught up in a murder investigation thats a little to close for comfort. The movie opens with an old friend turning up at Marlow’s apartment in the middle of the night, Marlowe is having problems with his cat, but still answers the door. Marlow drives his friend to the Tijuana border, only to return to his apartment and get himself arrested for abetting the murder of his friends wife. Marlow is released after three days with no apology, until he hears his friend has commited suicide in Mexico. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, he has a  new job. A beautiful blonde women, played by the excellent Nina Van Pallandt, hires Marlowe to locate her alcoholic husband. She fears he is in troub

Then, just as if things were looking better for our master sluth, a local hoodlum and his gang turn up at his apartment, to tell him he owes them $350,000 of mob money that Marlowe’s dead friend took to Mexico. After one of the most horrific glassing a women in the face scenes in film history ( the hood smashes a glass in his girlfriends face just to prove how crazy he is - “If I did that to someone I love, Just think what I’ll do to you, cos I dont like you”) Marlowe tails the hood, who leads him right to the blonde womens house with the missing husband. Something is going on and Marlowe must find out. Where is the mob money? Is his friend dead? And will his cat ever forgive and forget, and come home?

Altman regular Elliott Gould gives a wonderful, and utterly convincing and compelling performance as the culturally clueless private eye. His own style of dry wit and crisp delivery move the character slightly away from Chandler’s 40’s original, but also keeps his mind and body firmly in the classic film noir detective mold. Chandler’s Marlowe appears in several of his novels and was played twice by Robert Mitchum, firstly in 1975’s ‘Farewell, My Lovelly’ and then in 1978’s ‘The Big Sleep’. Goulds Marlowe is a man stuck in time

He still holds all the manerism’s, ideas and fashion of the “Original” Marlowe, in one scene Marlowe tells Wade he “wont take off his tie”, even though it is sun drenched L.A. He even rides the same car as the classic Marlowe. He is a man who is staying the same, the world around him is changing. The naked lesbian neighbours, who dance and eat hash cakes, are the perfect example of changes in American culture. Not only the fact that there are “free-loving lesbians” in the movie, unthinkable in 40’s Cinema, but that America, as a nation, was changing drastically. No place for a private eye!

Post-modern director Altman, who would later re-tell more of Chandler’s work in the compelling ‘Short Cuts’, handles the camera with suttle ease. Every scene and every shot, the camera is moving. A shift away from conventional Hollywood. Altman clearly inspired from the European Influence, most notable the New french wave, with directors such as Jean Trufo and Franco Goddard changing cinema. He still tributes “classic Hollywood film noir” by having characters desend into darkness but he clutches at new influences to try and change, and re-invent, the genre. The ending to ‘The Long Goodbye’ is a classic example of the new wave’s arrival into mainstream Hollywood, the original intriduction was ‘Bonnie and Clyde’, turned down by both Trufo and Goddard, but helmed by huge fan Arthur Penn. The film has a shocking and horrific ending. ‘The Long Goodbye’ also adds the ‘shock’ ending.

The movie is one of my, and brother’s, favourite’s. The hilarious film noir tribute/satire is brillaint in showing and exploring how American cinema changed in the late 60’s and early 70’s. The cast is excellent and the score fantastic, Altman would soon move onto what many consider his masterpiece, ‘Nashville’. Also look out for a brilliant cameo from some bloke called Arnie, playing mute heavy #3!

Elliott Gould .... Philip Marlowe Nina Van Pallandt.....Mrs. Wade Sterling Hayden . Mr. Wade Mark Rydell .... Marty Augustine Henry Gibson .... Dr. Verringer - (Click here to read Yoda’s ‘The Burbs’ review) David Arkin .... Harry Jim Bouton .... Terry Lennox

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