\u201cA nose-thumb not only at the idea of Philip Marlowe but at the genre that his tough-guy-soft-heart character epitomized,\u201d moaned Jay Cocks in TIME Magazine<\/em><\/a>. \u201cIt is a curious spectacle to see Altman mocking a level of achievement to which, at his best, he could only aspire.\u201d The negative reviews for The Long Goodbye<\/em> weren\u2019t just bad, they were personal. Bogie and The Big Sleep<\/em> were hallowed ground for film buffs, so the initial critical perception was that Altman and his shaggy-haired, traveling circus of stoners were pissing on a beloved American institution. The Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u2019 Charles Champlin complained that star Elliott Gould \u201cis not Chandler’s Marlowe, or mine, and I can’t find him interesting, sympathetic or amusing, and I can’t be sure who will.” But in 2005\u2019s Altman On Altman<\/em>, the director argued that he and Gould\u2019s allegedly blasphemous interpretation was actually more faithful to the novels than previous Chandler pictures. \u201cEveryone said that Elliott\u2019s not Phillip Marlowe and I wasn\u2019t being true to the author, but what they were really saying was that Elliott Gould wasn\u2019t Humphrey Bogart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He sure wasn\u2019t. Altman and Gould\u2019s heresy was to play it as if the iconic private eye had fallen asleep in 1953 and woke up groggy in then-present day Southern California. He drives a gargantuan 1948 Lincoln Continental on a freeway full of fancy foreign sportscars and is always wearing a blocky, black suit and a tie he won\u2019t take off even when he\u2019s at the beach. Marlowe\u2019s the only character who smokes cigarettes (constantly) while surrounded by health food-eating exercise enthusiasts. Muttering a motor-mouthed and oft-perplexed internal monologue in lieu of the usual film noir voice-over, Gould\u2019s Marlowe is a walking anachronism — a man out of time in the Me Decade. What the film\u2019s first critics couldn\u2019t see, but fans like Pauline Kael and Gene Siskel quickly picked up on, was that this allegedly radical re-interpretation was, in fact, a logical (if less glamorous) extension of Chandler\u2019s vision of Marlowe as the last hurrah for chivalry in a fallen, postwar world that\u2019s moved beyond his pesky moral concerns. Gould is grubby but gallant, a decent guy surrounded by sharks and constantly betrayed for having faith in his fellow man. His best friend describes him as \u201ca born loser.\u201d He even loses his cat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The plot was pared down from the labyrinthine novel by legendary screenwriter Leigh Brackett, who scripted everything from El Dorado<\/em><\/a> to The Empire Strikes Back<\/em>, and had worked with William Faulkner and Jules Furthman on Howard Hawks\u2019 1946 adaptation of The Big Sleep<\/em>. It\u2019s a characteristically convoluted scenario in which Marlowe pries into the mysterious death of his pal Terry Lennox in Mexico, where he\u2019d fled after maybe murdering his wife. Our detective also gets mixed up in a case with a Malibu blonde (Nina Van Pallandt) and her missing, much older, alcoholic writer husband \u2013 played by Sterling Hayden like he\u2019s Hemingway being played by John Huston. In keeping with the groovy \u201870s setting there\u2019s a dastardly New Age quack (the unnervingly malevolent Henry Gibson) and a gaggle of naked hippie chicks, stoned and doing yoga in the apartment across the way from Marlowe\u2019s place. Even the scariest gangster in town, chillingly embodied by director Mark Rydell in a too-rare acting turn, talks in trendy, self-actualization therapy lingo when he\u2019s not smashing glass bottles across his girlfriend\u2019s face. (Keep an eye out for one of his henchmen, an uncredited Austrian bodybuilder who back then was billed as Arnold Strong.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI remember when people just had jobs,\u201d sighs a bit player granted the movie\u2019s most emblematic line. There\u2019s an air of exhaustion to The Long Goodbye<\/em>, which drops Marlowe — an avatar of Hollywood\u2019s most romantic myths \u2013 into a washed-out wasteland of shallow, avaricious sociopaths. Altman\u2019s third collaboration with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond pushed even further into their penchant for \u201cflashing\u201d the film that the two had pioneered on McCabe & Mrs. Miller<\/em>. The controversial \u2013 some cameramen would say reckless — technique involved re-exposing the negative to light a second time after shooting in order to drain the contrast and envelop the image in a bright, ethereal haze. The Long Goodbye<\/em> has a glare that looks the way the world does when you\u2019re squinting at it through a horrific hangover, some scenes appearing as if seen through the smoke wafting up from one of Marlowe\u2019s omnipresent cigarettes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The camera never stops moving, always dollying and zooming and panning past the action so you\u2019re catching it on the fly as the movie ambles along without you. Bookended by bitterly ironic renditions of \u201cHooray for Hollywood,\u201d The Long Goodbye<\/em> is otherwise scored entirely by hilarious variations on John Williams and Johnny Mercer\u2019s eponymous two-line theme song, an insidiously catchy refrain repeated in every possible permutation from orchestral fanfare, to cocktail lounge jazz, to elevator Muzak, to doorbell chimes. (It\u2019s a great gag that the Coen brothers borrowed for Raising Arizona<\/em>, and when director Rian Johnson got a chance to work with Williams he had him work the theme into The Last Jedi<\/em>\u2019s casino scene.) It\u2019s all the same old song, the movie seems to be telling us. \u201cAnd it happens every day,\u201d according to the hauntingly repetitive lyrics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Altman liked to refer to The Long Goodbye<\/em> as \u201ca satire in melancholy,\u201d and the film can be screamingly funny, especially whenever Gould gets going. His Marlowe swaggers alongside the characters this singular star created with Altman for M*A*S*H<\/em> and California Split<\/em> as a triumvirate of the era\u2019s great anti-establishment outsiders — hepcat goofballs fast-talking jabberwocky while refusing to play by society\u2019s rules, no matter how much they know it\u2019s gonna cost them in the end. Gould turns the de rigueur<\/em> detective movie routine during which he\u2019s questioned at the station house into a tour de force of contempt for the cops, interrupting the interrogation by smearing his face with fingerprint ink and imitating Al Jolson singing \u201cSwanny.\u201d Marlowe\u2019s catch-phrase is \u201cIt\u2019s okay with me,\u201d a genial affirmation the agreeable private dick repeats almost ad infinitum to get himself out of awkward situations. All the way up until the film\u2019s abrupt final scene, when suddenly, shockingly, it isn\u2019t okay at all.\u00a0 \u201cThe Long Goodbye\u201d is currently streaming <\/em>on Amazon Prime<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/long-goodbye1-1024x576.jpg\")
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