On Saturday night, we watched Robert Altman’s “M.A.S.H.” (1970) and quite enjoyed it. I have, of course seen it many times, but it was the first time for my wife. The performances are great, although we found ourselves having a lot of sympathy for the pre-football game Margaret and bafflement over the entirely new Margaret character that seemed to take her place after Frank’s departure.
So on Sunday, we decided to try another Altman movie, and found “The Long Goodbye” on one of our streaming services. We got about 45 minutes into it before it was bedtime, and I have to say I am not getting what’s going on with this movie.
I’ve seen several Altman movies and have managed to find something entertaining in most of them, but “The Long Goodbye” seems very off. Elliot Gould’s performance seems very flat (honestly, so far, I hate his acting), and the voiceover narration is terrible and most of the time unnecessary.
So far the only interesting things have been the amazingly designed apartment complex that Marlowe lives in and the hippie neighbors who can’t seem to keep their clothes on (none of whom seems to have an IMDB credit–who are those actors, I want to know!). An outdoor elevator tower! That building looks really gorgeous.
So, I don’t even know if we are motivated to finish this movie. Can anyone give me any insight as to why this is considered a classic? What should I understand? What should I look for? And who played the next door hippies??
I saw it when it first came out, and I recall liking it at the time, although I haven’t seen it since.
It’s important to understand that Altman intended it as a satire, not a straight-up remake. The whole “cynical gumshoe” genre was cliched and out of date by the 1970s. Marlowe is a loser who still adheres to the morals of 20 years ago and can’t adapt to the present. His jaded and apathetic reaction to the hippies is a symptom of this.
I really like it and it is considered a bit of a cult classic, but it’s definitely not for everyone. It’s an odd, mannered film deconstructing and satirizing the Philip Marlowe character 1970’s style. I think you either really like Gould’s performance or you really don’t. I do :). The end is what kinda makes the film for me:
A bit of a sting-in-the-tail. The up to now put-upon, mumbling, comically sad sack and seemingly pushover Gould shows he really has been a hard case more than capable of taking care of himself all along, as he coldly shoots his former buddy that betrayed him.
Altman changed the timeframe of the book from 50s LA to the 70s LA. But he tried to make Marlowe a throwback to the past era; he didnt really fit in with the modern world. And casting Gould as Marlowe was curious because Gould is nothing like the literary Marlowe. I thought Henry Gibson and Sterling Hayden were brilliant in their roles. Altman and his cinematographer developed a new technique to alter the way the film looked. https://ascmag.com/articles/creative-post-flashing-technique-for-the-long-goodbye
Also, Marlowe kept his personal sense of morality to the very end.
Any MAD Magazine fans have to see the poster illustrated by Jack Davis, it’s pretty great. That was for the revised marketing campaign after the studio panicked when the movie didn’t do well in early engagements. I believe this was the original poster.
Thewikidescribes the release and re-release and it was panned initially. I remember people disliking it at the time, but the wiki also describes how it was poorly marketed as a traditional detective story, a well known one at that. The satirical nature of the movie didn’t appeal to me, it was very disappointing compared to MASH. I’ve seen it since and still find it tedious personally, but I can see some of the critics at the time welcoming something new that was breaking molds.
There is nothing satirical about it at all imo. Its a rather harsh indictment of early 70s LA seen through the eyes of Marlowe. And it contains perhaps the single most shocking incident of violence I have ever seen in a filmn.
Critics are wrong a lot, I don’t trust any of them in particular. But I wasn’t aware The Long Goodbye was so well regarded so I have to give it one more chance. My tastes might have changed a little over the last half century.
I like the film. Mark Rydell as Marty Augustine is one of the great film villains because he so psychotic and unpredictable.
Altman was trying to show Marlowe as a man who hadn’t moved with the times, and that a 40s-style morality was obsolete. Gould is constantly being shown that and the final scene indicates he realizes his code is dead. He probably suspects that all along; his performance is that of a man who had been beaten down. By dropping it at the end, it frees him and he jauntily walks away.
Sterling Hayden is excellent; it’s his best performance since Dr. Strangelove. Nina van Pallant is stunt casting, but she’s not terrible.
Did you spot Arnold Schwartzeneggar? He’s one of the bodybuilders across from Marlow’s apartment.
I would list it no as Altman’s best, but it’s in his upper half.
Of course the film’s a satire, particularly of the Chandler-style hard-boiled but honorable detective. But it’s also a satire of 1970s LA. And satire is one of the most common ways to make a biting social commentary.
The Big Lebowski is almost explicitly a parody of The Big Sleep (and other Chandler-esque detective noirs) in which the main character, instead of being two steps ahead of everyone like Bogart’s Marlowe, is consistently confused and nonplussed by everything going on around. The plot of the novel was so convoluted that between adapting it to screen and then recutting to emphasize the Bogart-Bacall dynamic the film actually doesn’t make much sense. The Big Lebowski, on the other hand, makes perfect sense; Bunny ‘kidnapped’ herself and Jeffery Lebowski used the kidnapping as an opportunity to steal money from the foundation he was assigned to run as a fop, and everyone else is just trying to get payment for the debts that Bunny owes or trying to return her to her parents (Jon Polito’s “brother shamus”). But because the Dude is in a constant haze of confusion and marijuana buzz, so is the viewer.
Ascenray, there’s no way to explain why it’s so good without giving away the ending. Yes, I think you should finish the film. It’s only in the last few minutes that you realize what’s going on.
Continuing … ElliotnGoildGoild really doesn’t seem like he is in the same room as the other actors. He sounds like Paul Scheer reading the script to himself under his breath while standing in line at Starbucks.
It might have worked as a straight-ahead film noir private eye story, which is all about style anyway. This was just nonsense.
This must have been the worst Gould performance I’ve ever seen. I don’t think it even qualifies as a performance. Nothing about him made any sense, not his delivery, not his physical performance, not his stupid “It’s okay with me” catchphrase. It’s like he didn’t even bother to act in this movie.
And the horrible quality of the ADR took me out of every scene. The overdubs were almost amateurish.
