The Long Goodbye

Rating:
Summary: A cinematic travesty
Review: Why is this movie so highly rated? People who have not read Chandler's extraordinary novel might like it. It can be justly 'appreciated' as a run of the mill action movie... But why use the title 'The Long Goodbye'? This film could have been made just as 'well' with different character's in slightly different situations. So why soil Raymond Chandler, his expertly woven story and his characters? Firstly Philip Marlowe is not a slob. He is just detective of modest means. Chandler makes no mention of Marlowe being particularly unkempt. That being so, it is an insult to both Chandler and his legendary protagonist. In fact the word 'unkempt' is a gross understatement. Marlowe is portrayed as a mumbling, slovenly pig. As if the attack on Marlowe personal hygiene wasn't enough, where did that irritating cat come from? Who cares what food it prefers? Even if these details are deemed inconsequential, why is it that three separate directors entrusted with bring Chandler's work to film feel the irresistible need to "update" the setting. This movie and 1969's 'Marlowe' are excruciatingly "campy" The third was Michael Winner's version of "The Big Sleep" who chose to shift not only time period but the country. Not only did the long goodbye tamper with the time and place of the story but also with it's basic elements. Including the ending. Which not only changes the murderer but also even the most basic fibers of Marlowe's personality. Marlowe stands for justice and righteousness, not for vengeance! As far as this film being 'butchered' on VHS, I wouldn't know. What I doknow is that letterbox or no letterbox this is an awful film. The format in which it is presented would not have remedied the grotesque problems with this film.....

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Movie, Atrocious on VHS
Review: Theatrical release of "The Long Goodbye" = 4.5 stars Video release of "The Long Goodbye" = 1 star

Robert Altman's noir pastiche, "The Long Goodbye," is one of his funniest, most engaging, and aesthetically magical films (with gorgeous night photography of Los Angeles). Unfortunately, it is unwatchable on VHS. I rented it a few years back, found the film incomprehensible, and initially assumed that Altman's directorial work was poor. Then, I caught it in a repertory theatre and recognized the problem.

This is a masterpiece, but it's impossible to make any sense of the pan-n-scan video; as in his other films ("McCabe & Mrs. Miller," "The Player") Altman takes full advantage of widescreen, a technique that is impossible to capture on a small television set. So do yourself a favor: avoid this video entirely, and either see the picture in a repertory house or wait until the distributors have enough sense to release it in letterbox.

Rating:
Summary: BEST MOVIE EVER.
Review: THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER.

Rating:
Summary: poor quality VHS
Review: The movie is really good. Elliott Gould is sweet. It looked great when I saw it in theaters way back then. However, whoever was responsible for the transfer from theater format to VHS must have proceeded without the blessings of Altman or the Director of Photography. The original cinematographic composition is gone and replaced with random framing. Hopefully someone will take notice and do the job properly with letterbox.

Rating:
Summary: Best Movie Ever Made
Review: It's my favorite movie. The Long Goodbye just works so well on so many levels. Gould was perfect here as the loser who will not sell out and walks the mean streets of L.A. like a scruffy, chain smoking, angel. The end is perfect. True Chandler fans will love it. It fits the tone and updates the time to the seventies. His constant chain smoking and his cat and his constant refrain, "it's okay with me" were all as funny as hell to me. The redemption at the end. He's a stand up guy. All the supporting roles were perfect. The musical theme of the movie plays all the way through in different ways, the best being a mexican mariachi band at a funeral. It is Altman's best film and that is saying a lot. Nina Van Pallandt is the ultimate burned out Los Angeles blonde. The supporting roles are all perfect. Chandler would have loved this movie. It is the best detective genre film ever made.

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant exercise in updating "noir"
Review: When Robert Altman decided to keep Raymond Chandler's milieu (Los Angeles) but update the era from the freighted 40s and 50s to the sleazy 70s, he added a lot more than color and unkempt hair. He rethought the whole myth of the hard-boiled private eye and handed it to Elliot Gould (who never did anything finer on film). Matching him is an oddball cast prominent among which are Sterling Hayden, Nina von Pallandt, Henry Gibson, and a very suspicious cat. Scene trumps stunning scene, leading to a twist undreamed of by Chandler that is triumphantly right. (Altman may have a hidden flair for thrillers; his Gingerbread Man also worked wonders with tired material.) This is one of the key films from a decade where movies were one of the few bright spots (and dazzlingly bright they were).

Rating:
Summary: Highly enjoyable, off-beat Phillip Marlowe mystery
Review: I came across this movie by way of Danny Peary's excellent book "Cult Movies". It is now one of my favorite films. Elliot Gould is great as Phillip Marlowe, and I'm not a big fan of his (I highly recommend the audio books of Raymond Chandler stories he narrates). The plot is appropriately complex in typical Chandleresque fashion and the humor offbeat in typical Altman fashion.

Look for Arnold Schwarzenneger as a henchman, it's his best role ever (could it be because he has no lines) ; )

Rating:
Summary: Didn't enjoy this film; I recommend: rent before you buy.
Review: Been a long time fan of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, consider it one of the great films of the '70s, and bought the disc with pleasure. So last week I rented 3 Women based on the reviews of that film here and absolutely loved it; an incredibly surreal and strange film. So I ordered it, and then decided to explore a few other '70s Altman films. Based on those reviews I decided to add The Long Goodbye with my order of 3 Women, expecting that I would enjoy both. But I couldn't wait, so I rented The Long Goodbye too and watched it last night. Suffice it to say, I didn't like it, but fortunately the order hadn't shipped so I was able to cancel The Long Goodbye in time and will just receive 3 Women from that order.

What didn't I like? Well, the scene setups are very cliche. In one scene Marlow and Ellen Wade are talking by a window. Altman separates each on both sides of the frame with the ocean behind the window in the center frame out of focus. Then there's movement in the window. The camera zooms past both Marlow and Wade to the scene past the window with both continuing their conversation and you see Wade's husband throw himself into the ocean in suicide. Great camera work, but the acting is played so deadpan by both that given the circumstances it just didn't seem believable. Gould's Marlow faces numerous situations where he plays it so deadpan it just didn't work for me, that's just one example.

And the ending, far from being a shocker, simply played out an obvious violent outcome that today wouldn't be the slightest bit outrageous. And yes, I recognize that the shocker is moral and not just a shock from violence. Maybe society today has simple degenerated over the last 30 years WRT accepting violent imagery. But it just didn't work for me either as a shocker or as a satisfactory conclusion to the story line. Honestly, Chinatown is a much better early '70s take on Noir and IMO eclipses this film by far.

Now I admit, I haven't read the Chandler book, nor have I seen The Big Sleep in a long, long time. So I don't have the context to properly review this film from a historical perspective. My review is strictly based on a single viewing last night where I walked away from the film disappointed after having expected to much more based on the reviews here. By all means, if you're exploring Altman films do rent this picture. Watch it. Then based on that decide if it's appropriate for your collection. If so, buy it with pleasure. But I can't honestly recommend buying this film based on the reviews here alone.

Rating:
Summary: Gumshoe, '60's Style
Review: The screenplay (Leigh Brackett) of The Long Good-bye is unusually well thought out and coherent. For a private-eye movie, that's an exception, and I suspect it's that very tightness which forced the famously anarchic Altman into a disciplined groove. It also helped produce this, his most accomplished, film. Then too, only an audacious film-maker of Altman's calibre could have brought such an irreverent approach to the screen.

Small wonder Chandler purists detest this 1960's version of Phillip Marlowe. Like others of that period, the film sets about subverting an icon of the popular culture. Elliot Gould's Marlowe is anything but the hard-boiled professional audiences have come to admire and expect. Instead, he's grubby, feckless, and seemingly too disengaged to care about Chandler's prized passion: chasing after truth despite an uncaring corrupt society. Worse, one suspects Gould's Marlowe is a hippie at heart, ready to chuck it all and head for the woods with his beloved cat, a load of pot, and a world-weary "Its OK with me". Moreover, he's tossed about by most every event that comes his way, too burned-out to complete a thought and too bummed-out to press an investigation. He can't even find his cat. The slouching gait and hang-dog expression have all the assurance and verve of a man headed for a hanging. Bogart's classic impersonation, it ain't.

But Altman has laid a trap, one that only comes into focus at film's end. It's a startling yet oddly believable turn of events. Head doctors term this type of reconfiguration Gestalt Shift, and here the shift is a rewarding one, causing us to go back and re-examine the Gould character and his passage through what has gone before. It's also a brilliant stroke which at last links the counter-cultural Marlowe to the classic version. There are many fine touches in the film, including a highly effective use of sudden violence, particularly runty Henry Gibson's slam-bang humbling of lordly Sterling Hayden (he knows about drunks). And, for once, Altman's penchant for non-actors like Jim Bouton does little damage, although I wish the ending had skipped the ill-advised "Hooray for Hollywood". Nonetheless, this is one of the half dozen or so films that define counter-cultural film-making from the 60's. However, Its key Southern California ambience is best viewed, as other reviewers point out, in wide-screen. So catch up with that mode if you can.

Rating:
Summary: Altman meets Chandler
Review: Many movie makers use to make good novel adaptions for the celluloid after previously having them converted into scripts that try to recreate the books' atmosphere. Altman, though, uses to take someone else's writings just to fit them into his personal satirical vision of corruption, lies and dishonesty inherent to us human beings, to set them, finally, into a brilliant suite of humor gags. The Long Goodbye is a special work of Altman -perhaps not as notorius as MASH, Short Cuts, The Player, etc.-, but here the satire and the black humor reach an unexpected zenith through a playwrite that is la crème de la crème...The main character -Philipp Marlowe- played by Elliot Gould, is one of the coolest and most hillarious detectives ever seen on screen. A chain-smoking curly-headed loser addicted to Marlboro cigarettes and witty wisecracking who seems to be more of that sort from the outside looking in, spins the fade of the action and meets the infamous bunch half amused and half horrorized, but never trusting anybody of them. An outsider-loner, so as Chandler figured out Marlowe in his novels and as Raymond Chandler self and the only one in possession of a bit of honesty and integrity, he tries to clear up the missing of a good friend and comes upon deeply rotten intrigues faded by stingy shrinks and a wife of wishy-washy reliability played by Danish baronessa Van Pallandt in one role out of her usual folky-hippy musical attempts of real life. Her husband, -a writer, stunnigly good played by Sterling Hayden-, delivers one of the dazzling perfomances. Meanwhile, Marlowe tries to fool his cat feeding him with the wrong brand that he dislikes -one of the most hillarious bits of the film, it takes at least five minutes-, getting to the supermarket, digging it and changing the label of the can. Other memorable moments follow, like the wanna-be-actor-chap of the parking ground impersonating Barbara Stanwyck or the Jewish gangster cracking a glas vase in his own girlfriend's face, stating: "...And this is the person I love the most in the world, now go and figure out what could I do with you -and I don't even like you". Marlowe's trip over the Mexican border turns out to be rather elucidating too. This is Altman at his best, pulling everybody to pieces, but contrary to his European counterpart Chabrol does -with the coldness and precission of a surgeon's scalpel- Altman gets to the conclusion that once the disgust's been got over, humor is the only weapon left to can stand up all the rotten things in this world.