The Long Goodbye

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe was one of the seminal private dick characters, and it is his cynical honesty which is created here by Robert Altman in an ironic updating of Chandler's novel. The screenplay was written by Leigh Brackett, who previously co-scripted the 1946 Bogart-Bacall version of Chandler's The Big Sleep, and The Long Goodbye certainly stands alongside that film as the most intelligent screen adaptation of Chandler's work. Elliott Gould's Marlowe is an easy-going, laid-back slob, but Altman suggests that this is how the '40s Marlowe, with his intrinsically uptight and moral values, would end up if transported into the superficial, transient and self-centred preyuppie culture of 1970s LA. in responding to the appeal of a friend who is suspected of killing his wife, Marlowe finds himself increasingly caught up in a web of death, betrayal and blackmail. Altman's condemnation of the direction in which the American dream is heading is both cynical and stylish, and is full of references, to earlier works in the genre, and to Chandler (Alocoholism and cats). Vilmos Zsigsmond's ever-mobile camera and John Williams' score are both excellent, and the acting is highly-polished throughout. Look out for cameos from a captive David Carradine, and a young Arnold Schwarzenneger as a museleman.

Review by Iain Lang
Taken from EUFS Programme 1993-94