"The Long Goodbye" (1973), Robert Altman's deconstruction of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe by placing him in a strange, bizarre environment, LA of the seventies, is an excellent film, probably the best that I've seen from Altman. As an adaptation of the source novel, it of course fails, as it intends to, for as ever with this director, character takes precedence over plot. While on paper, apart from the updated setting, it might sound fairly faithful, the elimination of characters, the reducing in importance of others, and the final inversion of the novel's original climax serves to underline that the now much reduced, actually quite straightforward plotting is really only there so Altman can explore this man Marlowe. Aided by a superb Elliot Gould in his best performance, he gets under the skin of him, the mess of contradictions that define him and his resolute refusal to change with the times, leading him ultimately to failure (it's hard to see the finale as a triumph for him). His "other time" characterisation results him in being the only moral person in the film, Altman using Marlowe's utter disbelief at what the world has become to also transform into a critical commentary of America during this time period, a world populated by Terry Lennoxes and Marty Augustines (Mark Rydell whose shocking "That's someone I love. You, I don't even like." scene is the most powerful in the picture).
Vilmos Zsigmond's unique cinematographic appearance, all diffuse, soft lighting, that looks "blown out" is incredible and gives it a haze of the past, as if it were Marlowe's sleepy, laidback "It's okay with me" view of life that we're seeing. Yet it would be wrong to deny that it's a perfect film; the friendship with Lennox that the film pivots is never established very convincingly. It's hard to see this Marlowe liking the sleazy Californian charm of Terry Lennox (Jim Boulton) here, and Nina Van Pallandt, while not as bad as I feared, doesn't stand up to roaring Sterling Hayden as the alcoholic writer Roger Wade or Gould himself. Still, these unbalances don't sabotage the film, and while I'm far from an Altman fan, this is certainly one of the essential American films from the seventies, a decade full of them.
Vilmos Zsigmond's unique cinematographic appearance, all diffuse, soft lighting, that looks "blown out" is incredible and gives it a haze of the past, as if it were Marlowe's sleepy, laidback "It's okay with me" view of life that we're seeing. Yet it would be wrong to deny that it's a perfect film; the friendship with Lennox that the film pivots is never established very convincingly. It's hard to see this Marlowe liking the sleazy Californian charm of Terry Lennox (Jim Boulton) here, and Nina Van Pallandt, while not as bad as I feared, doesn't stand up to roaring Sterling Hayden as the alcoholic writer Roger Wade or Gould himself. Still, these unbalances don't sabotage the film, and while I'm far from an Altman fan, this is certainly one of the essential American films from the seventies, a decade full of them.