{"id":1107,"date":"2004-11-14T07:59:47","date_gmt":"2004-11-14T11:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=1107"},"modified":"2014-12-07T11:22:46","modified_gmt":"2014-12-07T15:22:46","slug":"the-long-goodbye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/?p=1107","title":{"rendered":"The Long Goodbye"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I've said in other reviews, many of Robert \r\nAltman's films begin by thrusting us into the middle of a complex \r\nstory and letting us figure out characters and plots and motivations \r\n(and even names) as best we can. The Long Goodbye<\/em> is the opposite of that. From the beginning, it's clear that this will be a story \r\nfocused primarily on one man. We first see Philip Marlowe asleep, alone, \r\nlying on his bed in his clothes (a whole essay could be written about \r\nmovie characters who sleep in their clothes), being awakened by his \r\ncat. The cat is hungry, but it will only eat one specific brand and \r\nflavor of cat food.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

Marlowe mumbles and grumbles and lights a cigarette \r\nby striking a kitchen match on the wall. From the state of the wall, \r\nthis is obviously not the first time, and throughout the movie Marlowe \r\nwill light his matches on any available surface. He doesn't have his \r\ncat's preferred brand of cat food, and so, talking to himself all the \r\ntime, he goes out to buy some, even though it's the middle of the \r\nnight.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

As he leaves the building, he talks with the \r\nspaced-out girls who live across the way from him, promising to buy \r\nthem some brownie mix. He knows why they want brownie mix at three in \r\nthe morning (two boxes), but as he says, \"It's okay with me,\" which is \r\nhis mantra throughout the film. One of the girls tells him that he's \r\nthe nicest neighbor they've ever had, and he mutters to himself as he \r\nleaves, \"I've got to be the nicest neighbor, I'm a private eye. It's \r\nokay with me.\"<\/P> \r\n \r\n

So, in a brief (less than four minutes) and \r\ndesultory scene, we've learned quite a bit. Altman, when he wants to, \r\ncan convey a lot of information very economically, without that \r\nawkward feeling that comes from raw exposition being forced on the \r\naudience just to get it out of the way.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

The point is made quite a bit, especially early in \r\nthe movie, how out of step Marlowe is with the times. The movie is \r\nset in the 1970s, but Marlowe seems (in some ways) to be living in the \r\n1940s. He wears an old-fashioned black suit, a white shirt and a \r\nskinny tie, he smokes unfiltered cigarettes and he drives a 1940s car. \r\nThis point is frequently overemphasized in reviews and essays, however, as if he has stepped right out of The Big Sleep <\/em>or Murder My Sweet<\/em>.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

If that was what Altman wanted to do, he would have \r\ncast Robert Mitchum. The studio tried to get him to use Mitchum, but \r\nAltman resisted. He wanted Elliott Gould, and there was a very \r\ngood reason. Gould may have the suit, the cigarettes and the car, but \r\nhe doesn't wear a fedora, or a trench coat, his hair is too long and \r\ncurly, and his demeanor is anything but grim. In short, he is Elliott \r\nGould, an actor very much of the 1970s, not Bogart or Powell or \r\nMitchum, and that's the point.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

Robert Altman has said that he took Raymond \r\nChandler's Philip Marlowe and stripped away all the phony hero \r\nattributes, making Marlowe the loser that a guy like that would be in \r\nthe real world, without the all-powerful author looking out for him. \r\nMarlowe does a favor for a friend, driving his old buddy Terry Lennox \r\ndown to Tijuana in the middle of the night, but there's no reward, not in money or in honor or in gratitude. He acts like he knows what's going on, \r\nbut everybody else, including the cops, always knows more than he \r\ndoes. He gets the crap beaten out of him and it never does him any \r\ngood (and he never gets to even the score later on). He never gets \r\nthe girl (any girl).<\/P> \r\n \r\n

Marlowe's sense of honor is contrasted with other \r\ncharacters time and again. They are all either brutal or dishonest, \r\nand he is never either. Marlowe is lied to by Dr. Verringer (who denies he even is Dr. Verringer), by his friend Terry Lennox, and by his client Eileen Wade.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

Roger Wade, the famous writer that Marlowe has \r\nbeen hired to find, is a sympathetic character, and mostly (though \r\nnot entirely) honest, but he's also a bully. He uses his size and his thundering voice to intimidate his wife and his friends. He tries to use them to bully the diminutive Dr. Verringer, but when Verringer won't back down (and even slaps him), he gives in meekly, since he doesn't have anything else left but bluster.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

The most alarming scene is with Marty Augustine, the hoodlum who thinks Marlowe worked with Terry Lennox to steal his money. Augustine softly praises his girlfriend's beauty in front of Marlowe, only to slash her face a second later with a broken bottle, turning to Marlowe with the grim reminder that, \"That's<\/I> someone I love, and you<\/I> I don't even like.\"<\/P> \r\n \r\n

This is the most shocking moment in the movie. Marlowe's \"It's okay with me\" facade slips, and even some of Augustine's goons are stunned. But Marlowe quickly recovers his poise, and it's obvious that his attitude and his clothes and so on are his armor against a very brutal world. When Roger Wade tells him to \"take that Goddamn J.C. Penney tie off and let's have a good, old-fashioned man-to-man drinking party,\" Marlow agrees immediately to the drinks and the conversation, but he won't remove his tie.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

It reminded me of Strange Days<\/em>, where Max teases Lenny Nero about his fancy wardrobe, and Lenny said, \"that's all that stands between me and the jungle.\" And later, when Mase says that, no matter what filth he moves through, Lenny never lets it touch him, that he just remains the same goofball romantic, he replies, \"it's my \r\nsword and my shield, Masey.\"<\/P> \r\n \r\n

But, ultimately, despite everything, Marlowe does \r\ntriumph. He does solve the mystery, and in the end he does reassert \r\nhis value system. By his standards, he wins, though he has to spend \r\n$5,000 to do it. The last shot of the movie recalls the end of The Third Man<\/em>, where Anna rejects pulp writer Holly Martins for allowing Harry Lime (his friend and her lover) to be killed. Harry Lime deserved it, but that's not the point. The point is that Holly put honor above friendship, and that's why she rejects him. Holly, clueless as ever, thought it might be otherwise.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

At the end of The Long Goodbye<\/em>, Marlowe has chosen honor above friendship, but he's not worried about Eileen Wade's \r\nreaction as she drives past him on that long, straight road, since he \r\nknows he did the right thing. And again, his demeanor is far from the \r\ngrim detective of the 1940s, as he cavorts down the road playing his \r\ntiny harmonica.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

Altman's best endings often put a smart spin on \r\ntraditional Hollywood formulas. In \r\nMcCabe & Mrs. Miller<\/em><\/A>, John McCabe \r\nactually defeats all three hired killers, like a real Western hero, but then he succumbs to his injuries and dies in the snow, alone and unnoticed. At the end of Kansas City<\/em><\/A>, quite a few of our assumptions are overturned pretty abruptly. Who is the dreamer and who is the realist, who has the power of life and death over who, and so on. (In addition, it probably won't ever be possible to take the phrase, \"I can't live without you!\" completely seriously again.)<\/P> \r\n \r\n

I should mention that, perhaps more than any other \r\nRobert Altman movie, The Long Goodbye <\/em>shows the director's ability to get first-rate performances from people who aren't even known as actors. In this movie, the ensemble consists of a good actor, a great \r\nactor, a former baseball player, a movie director, a regular from \r\n\"Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In,\" and a woman best known as the mistress of a world-famous scam artist. And still, every performance is good, and \r\nmost of them are great.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

Also, this is one of the two best-looking movies \r\nAltman ever made (along with \r\nMcCabe & Mrs. Miller<\/em><\/A>), probably because those are the two times he worked with award-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond.* This is clear on video, but far more so on the big screen, of course.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

Two scenes are particularly striking. The first is \r\na conversation between Roger and Eileen Wade, after Marlowe has \r\nbrought the writer home from Dr. Verringer's clinic. They are talking \r\nin Roger's studio and we see them first through the big glass doors, \r\nbut we also see Marlowe's reflection in the glass, playing tag with \r\nthe waves on the beach. And then, as the conversation between husband \r\nand wife intensifies, the camera moves into the room, and Marlowe is \r\nexcluded (the only significant sequence in the movie which doesn't \r\ninclude him, as a matter of fact).<\/P> \r\n \r\n

This scene is echoed later on in the film when \r\nRoger is passed out drunk after throwing all the party guests out of \r\nthe house. Eileen persuades Marlowe to stay to eat dinner with her (this is the scene where, if this were a conventional detective movie, they'd end up in bed together). We see them eating, and between them is the window through which we can see the white smudge which is Roger Wade wandering out into the ocean. Then, we see Eileen and Marlowe from outside the window, their conversation no longer audible, and we see her reaction as she sees that her husband is drowning himself.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

Both scenes are visually stunning, but the whole \r\nfilm is wonderful to look at.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

_____________________
\r\n* Vilmos Zsigmond has worked on way too many films to list here (the \r\ninternet movie database<\/A> lists 65) \r\nbut it is worth mentioning that he was the cinematographer on Close \r\nEncounters of the Third Kind<\/em>, Deliverance<\/em>, The Sugarland Express<\/em>, The Last Waltz<\/em>, The Deer Hunter<\/em> and The Two Jakes<\/em>.<\/P> \r\n \r\n

Oh, and also on The Incredibly Strange Creatures \r\nWho Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies <\/em>(1963).<\/P> \r\n \r\n\r\n

The Long Goodbye<\/BIG>
(1973)<\/SPAN><\/B>
\r\nDirected by Robert Altman
\r\nWritten by Leigh Brackett
 
\r\nCast:<\/SPAN><\/B>
\r\nPhilip Marlowe : Elliott Gould
\r\nEileen Wade : Nina van Pallandt
\r\nRoger Wade : Sterling Hayden
\r\nMarty Augustine : Mark Rydell
\r\nDr. Verringer : Henry Gibson
\r\nTerry Lennox : Jim Bouton

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As I’ve said in other reviews, many of Robert Altman’s films begin by thrusting us into the middle of a complex story and letting us figure out characters and plots and motivations (and even names) as best we can. The Long Goodbye is the opposite of that. From the beginning, it’s clear that this will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[36,33],"class_list":["post-1107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-movie-reviews-2","tag-robert-altman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1107"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5108,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1107\/revisions\/5108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u-town.com\/collins\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}