The Long Goodbye | | Cast : | Elliott Gould, Nina Van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden | | Director : | Robert Altman | | Studio : | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | March 07, 1973 | | DVD Released Date : | September 07, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 30, 2005 | | Summary | Deconstructing film " noir " | Content
 | Robert Altman's " The long goodbye " is an outstanding film in many ways:for one side,due to the liquid treatment(visual promiscuity;uncentralization of the dramatic action and valuation of lateral details; continuous movement of the camera; smooth travellings combined with "zoom" effects; sudden focus changes )of its mesmerizing images and surrounded and haunting theme song ( composed by Johnny Mercer),the dominant musical piece in the film but reinterpreted with different instruments and tones along the movie collaborating to the general hypnotic effect that destils all the film; for another side, because the "jazzistic" treatment of a genre and a character,( and this connects with the intention to give different variations of a same musical piece )that as in many films of the director appears dissolved in a polyphonic structure; and finally , because Altman revives, at the same time he subverts since its roots a genre that had been fallen into melancholy and into an excessive kindness conducting it to the free-wheeling spirit of the 70's and to his own ideology and democratic conception of film.Vaguely inspired in the novel with the same title by Raymond Chandler, Altman's film constitutes the destruction of old narratives codes and a stereotype that the director turns down in an ironic and realistic way( Marlowe ( Elliott Gould ) don't try to seduce girls and prefers words than arms; he usually talks with a cigarette between his teeths or Altman films Marlowe's back while he's talking, producing the effect of "off-voice", typical narrative support of "film noir " )cracking with the expresionist portrait, surrounded by shadows and lights, of the character, at the same time as he uses Marlowe as counterbalance to emphasize his sarcastic vision of corruption. In an underground way, the film can be read as a sardonic criticism to Hollywood's ideology.
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| Rating | | | Date | May 26, 2005 | | Summary | Marlowe ain't Fletch | Content
| -- but that's the way Altman and Gould envision him. What starts out to be a pretty interesting, offbeat film winds up collapsing under its own lacksidasical execution and pretentious modernization. Annoying. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 07, 2005 | | Summary | One of Altman's most enjoyable films | Content
| I saw this film as part of the Cal State Northridge Cinematheque Critics Series with a special visit from Pulitzer-Prize winning critic Joseph Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal. The evening was moderated by David Kipen of the San Francisco Chronicle, Morgenstern gave great insight into the industry while presenting one of his favorite films, Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye.
I enjoyed The Long Goodbye. I did not find it tedious at all, like a woman in the audience expressed, but can understand why someone might think it is. Although the film moved slowly, it remained interesting, partly because of its characters. It was a dark noir with an absorbing and complicated mystery and plenty of humor. I especially liked Mr. Gould's rendition of the popular noir detective.
Philip Marlowe has been played by the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum, and James Garner, all tremendous actors, but Elliott Gould gives the private eye a sort of stoner quality that fits perfectly into the 70's era. The Philip Marlowe of the 70's talks to himself and smokes way too much. He gets involved in a couple of cases, which all neatly come together at the end.
There's the central mystery of Marlowe's friend Terry Lennox, who may or may not have killed his wife. Marlowe is duped into driving him to Tijuana and when Lennox commits suicide, Marlowe is determined to figure out the truth. When his picture ends up in the paper, he is hired by a socialite named Eileen Wade to find her missing husband. Marlowe also gets into trouble with a gangster, who thinks he helped Lennox steal money from him. In one of the best, and most suspenseful, scenes in the film, the gangster smashes a coke bottle in his girlfriend's face to let Marlowe know he means business. Despite the mess he finds himself in, "It's okay with me" remains Marlowe's phrase of choice.
The mystery makes sense eventually with perhaps a too off the wall ending. Was it in Marlowe's nature to do what he did? Maybe, but no matter how stressed, tired, and betrayed he felt, there could have been a better way to handle the situation. I felt a bit suckered by the ending; not the climax, but Marlowe's actions in the resolution. It was too neat and perhaps a bit too unbelievable. I know plenty of people who might argue against me, but I stand by my opinion.
The other thing I didn't like about the film was the irritating title theme popping up in the most unusual places. It was okay at first, and in fact, had a nice little beat, but it got rather annoying hearing it in almost every scene. Were there no other songs around in the world of 1970's Philip Marlowe? Since the song had different reincarnations throughout, I'd think not.
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| Rating | | | Date | April 03, 2005 | | Summary | "Not Humphrey Bogart" | Content
| One of the extra features on this DVD is an interview with Altman in which he says that many people objected to this film for the reason given in the title of this review: that their expectations of the fictional character of Philip Marlowe were disappointed by the Gould portrayal. Instead of a knight in shining armor they got a slob who smoked too much and talked to himself. And they hated the ending: Marlowe, they say, would never do anything like that. I beg to differ. His action at the end was shocking, yes, and perhaps it would never be done in "real life"--but inconsistent with his character? Not at all. Being a Chandler fan myself, I was quite disappointed with this picture when I first saw it, because I expected a literal interpretation of the story and didn't get one with Altman's innovative, challenging, and frequently jarring update. Hooray for Hollywood, indeed. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 19, 2005 | | Summary | Altman meets Chandler | Content
| 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. |
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