Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

I saw the first twelve features films directed by Robert Altman in their theatrical release (along with many others, found Quintet unwatchable, walked out and didn't even hear of his next movie ("A Perfect Couple" until looking to see what the number was). I was less enthusiastic about the first, "M*A*S*H" than many, more enthusiastic about "Brewster McCloud" than many (but in the company of Leonard Cohen on that), and then totally enraptured by "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" (with Cohen's music and the sepia-tinted cinematography of Vilmos Zsigmond bolstering the outstanding performances of Julie Christie and Warren Beatty). As befit its title "Images" looked interesting (also lensed by Zsigmond). Then (1973), there was the second masterpiece (although not everyone recognized it at the time), "The Long Goodbye."

As Altman discusses in an exceedingly interesting DVD feature titled "Rap van Marlowe," the movie was originally released in Los Angeles with an advertising campaign more appropriate to one of the James Bond spoofs like "In Like Flint" than to Atlman's deconstruction of the hard-boiled detective genre. A different advertising campaign was designed for the New York opening, and the movie was a hit there. Over the years, the ranks of detractors have been depleted and the ranks of admirers have swelled.

In 1973 it was obvious that the private detective Philip Marlowe as incarnated by a perpetually weary and jerked-around Elliot Gould was an anachronism. He drove a convertible that was not new at the time Raymond Chandler's novel was originally published (1953). Although often rumpled, Marlowe always wore a suit and a tie (albeit a J. C. Penny one) even to a Malibu beach party. Since more years have passed between the movie's making and now than between Chandler's writing of the novel and Altman's filming of it, everything looks retro and it is harder for contemporary audiences to distinguish what was 1950s debris from the early-1970s look, though there are some people like Marlowe's semi-clad neighbors for whom the time is always 4:20...

What was already most anachronistic about Marlowe, even in 1953, was his code of honor and fierce sense of loyalty to his friend Terry Lennox (portrayed by Yankee pitcher turned author (Ball Four) Jim Bouton. Chandler's Marlowe was always something of a ronin (a masterless samurai) with a code of honor in a world of sleaze (sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, celebrity manufacturing).

Appreciation is something of which Marlowe in any of his incarnations did not receive much. In "The Long Goodbye" it starts with his cat, who jumps onto him in the middle of the night. He goes to an all-night store to try to get the kind of food the cat likes and goes to the bother of putting what they had stocked into the empty can of the cat's favorite (reminding me of a more recent "goodbye" movie: "Goodbye to Lenin"). The subterfuge does not work, a synecdoche for how Marlowe's efforts are appreciated.

His friend Terry then shows up and asks Marlowe to drive him to the Mexican border. By the time Marlowe gets back to LA, the corpse of Terry's wife has been found and Terry's car has been found in the vicinity of Marlowe's apartment. The LAPD officers are not amused by Marlowe's antics (including painting his face with the ink from fingerprinting).

Released from jail when Mexican police report Terry Lennox has committed suicide there, Marlowe insists that his friend could not have murdered his wife. Seething, he takes on finding the Hemingwayesque drunk and burned-out author Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden) at the behest of Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt) his younger and very beautiful wife. Natch, they are neighbors of the Lennoxes and Marlowe asks each of the Wades (after he finds Roger in a very dubious clinic operated by a very sinister and implacable Henry Gibson, who at one point reaches up to slap Roger Wade, who stands at least a foot higher than he does) about the Lennoxes.

There is a lot of plot, which I have no intention of spoiling. It is not as confusing as "The Big Sleep," which was adapted by William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett from an earlier Chandler novel. Brackett's screenplay changed the answer of "Who dunnit?" from the novel. It was her ending that made Altman want to make the movie. (In the interview footage, he says he had written into his contract that the studio could not change the ending. He also says that before her death, Brackett expressed her delight with the movie.) The revised ending has choked some keepers of the Chandler flame and the traditional private eye. It is not a 1950s ending, though it is followed by a coda that seems to me derived from one of the greatest of midcentury films, "The Third Man."

I find it hard to imagine anyone other than Sterling Hayden in the part of Roger Wade, suffering from a lethal case of machismo (like Hemingway, posturing, unable to write, and generally unable to live up to the demands of his conception of what his macho role requires). Hayden in a compelling, tortured wreck. It is easy to feel sympathy the wife who has to put up with his antisocial and self-destructive behavior (partly due to how van Pallandt played the part, partly to Leigh Brackett's revision of the character Chandler wrote). The part of Roger Wade was supposed to have been played by Dan Blocker (Bonanza), which I am unable to imagine. The other casting was unusual, though characteristically Altmanesque. One of the thugs working for the pious Jewish gangster Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell), who strips to his yellow briefs but does not have any lines was played by Arnold Schwarzanegger and Keith Carradine, who appeared in many early Altman movies, has a small part yelling to Marlowe in jail.

Elliot Gould plays the disappointment of the honorable ronin who finds himself in an unfamiliar and hostile world (having slept the twenty years between book and movie...) very well. His leitmotif ("It's OK with me") prefigures the ending of "Nashville" (in which Keith Carradine's song, "It don't bother me" is reprised). There are, however, some things, notably betrayal that are not OK with him, often as he shrugs and says "It's OK with me."

Speaking of leitmotifs, the song "The Long Goodbye," with music by John Williams, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, recurs in a remarkable number of different forms, including a Mexican brass band in a funeral procession that passes the office where Marlowe is making inquiries about his dead friend.

In addition to the already-mentioned "Rip van Marlowe" that intercuts very insight-providing interviews of Altman and Gould, there is a shorter interview of cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, and a lengthy 1973 article (in readable font) that explains the technique he used to drain the images (exposing the unprocessed film to varying amounts of light before or after shooting scenes). It is quite technical. All the interviews of Altman and commentary tracks of his that I have heard enhance understanding of and appreciation for the movies he discusses (I'd be curious to hear if he could explain the mess he made out of "BeyondTherapy"...)

I thought the movie was very impressive in 1973, and liked it a lot. If asked to rate it then, I probably would have gone with 4.5 stars, but with the DVD extras and the further passage of time, "The Long Goodbye" has joined "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "Nashville" as consensus pieces of the canon of masterpieces from the first half of the 1970s.


Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD