The Long Goodbye

To describe a film as an “exercise in style” is to acknowledge that its creators prioritised aesthetic innovation and tonal experimentation over narrative coherence or thematic depth. Such works often divide audiences, dismissed as indulgent or hollow by some, yet celebrated by critics and cinephiles for their audacious formal daring. Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973), a freewheeling reinterpretation of Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled detective fiction, epitomises this dichotomy. A quintessential product of New Hollywood’s irreverent spirit, the film gleefully dismantles the conventions of its genre, transforming Chandler’s iconic private eye Philip Marlowe into a shambling anachronism adrift in the moral vacuum of 1970s California. While its plot meanders and its protagonist baffles, the film’s stylistic bravura—its languid pacing, overlapping dialogue, and surreal visuals—cements its status as a cult classic. This is a work that thrives on contradiction: a detective story disdainful of resolution, a noir drenched in sunlight, and a Chandler adaptation that feels more like a parody. For all its flaws, The Long Goodbye remains a fascinating artefact of its era, a film that dares to be both brilliant and infuriating.

The film’s source material, Chandler’s 1953 novel The Long Goodbye, occupies an ambiguous position in the author’s canon. Chandler himself considered it his most personal work, suffused with autobiographical reflections on alcoholism and disillusionment, yet critics often rank it below masterpieces like The Big Sleep (1939) or Farewell, My Lovely (1940). Its reputation as a lesser entry stems partly from its convoluted plot—a labyrinth of double-crosses and red herrings—and its melancholic introspection, which clashes with the taut cynicism of Chandler’s earlier novels. Despite these challenges, Hollywood repeatedly attempted to adapt it. The first effort arrived swiftly: a 1954 episode of the Climax! television anthology starring Dick Powell, who had previously played Marlowe in 1944’s Murder, My Sweet. However, the project languished in development hell for nearly two decades until screenwriter Leigh Brackett, co-architect of Howard Hawks’ seminal 1946 adaptation of The Big Sleep, revived it. Brackett’s involvement promised fidelity to Chandler’s spirit, but her collaboration with Altman—a director synonymous with New Hollywood’s anti-establishment ethos—guaranteed radical reinvention.

Like the 1969 film Marlowe, which transplanted Chandler’s detective into a swinging ’60s Los Angeles, Altman’s The Long Goodbye updates the story to contemporary California. This temporal shift is central to the film’s conceit: Marlowe (Elliott Gould), a relic of 1940s moral certitude, navigates a world of feckless hippies, narcissistic elites, and casual violence. The plot, ostensibly a mystery, unfolds with dreamlike incoherence. Marlowe’s old friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) enlists his help to flee to Mexico after his wife’s murder, only for Marlowe to be jailed as an accessory. Released after Lennox’s apparent suicide, he is drawn into a parallel quest to find Roger Wade (Stirling Hayden), an alcoholic novelist whose wife, Eileen (Nina Van Pallandt), hides her own secrets. Meanwhile, gangster Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell) terrorises Marlowe, convinced he possesses money Lennox stole. The narrative spirals into absurdity, eschewing Chandler’s meticulous plotting for a series of disconnected vignettes that highlight Marlowe’s impotence.

Brackett’s screenplay streamlines Chandler’s Byzantine narrative, yet the film remains stubbornly opaque. Key motivations are obscured, red herrings abound, and the final act’s violent twist feels unearned. Critics have noted parallels to Brackett’s work on The Big Sleep, whose famously incoherent plot—a result of post-production edits—nonetheless became a noir touchstone. The difference lies in intent: Hawks’ film embraced confusion as a stylistic device, whereas Altman’s seems genuinely disinterested in clarity. Scenes meander, conversations overlap, and crucial details dissolve into the hazy ambiance. While this approach mirrors Marlowe’s disorientation, it risks alienating viewers seeking a traditional mystery.

The film’s most polarising element is Elliott Gould’s portrayal of Marlowe. Gone is the stoic, trench-coated knight-errant of Chandler’s novels; in his place stands a mumbling, rumpled everyman, perpetually out of step with his surroundings. Gould plays Marlowe as a passive observer, a man who mutters “It’s okay with me” like a mantra even as he’s manipulated, beaten, and betrayed. Altman envisioned him as “Rip Van Marlowe,” a man out of time clinging to obsolete codes of honour in a narcissistic age. Yet the performance falters under its own ambivalence. Gould’s Marlowe lacks the gravitas to anchor the film, rendering his final act of vengeance—a stark departure from Chandler’s ending—emotionally hollow. Younger audiences, unversed in noir tropes, may see not a tragic anachronism but a generic loser. Casting an older actor, such as Sterling Hayden (who instead plays Wade), might have sharpened the generational clash Altman sought.

Altman’s signature techniques—long takes, overlapping dialogue, roving zooms—are deployed with characteristic irreverence. While these choices exacerbate the narrative confusion, they also create moments of hypnotic beauty. Vilmos Zsigmond’s cinematography drenches Los Angeles in a bleached, sunlit haze, transforming beaches and mansions into alien landscapes. The camera lingers on surreal details: a supermarket’s fluorescent glare, a nude yoga session on a balcony, a procession of cars ascending a hill like pilgrims. John Williams’ score amplifies the disorientation, looping a single jazz theme through dissonant variations—a gimmick that mirrors the film’s cyclical futility.

The film’s idiosyncrasies oscillate between inspired and indulgent. Marlowe’s apartment, shared with a coven of spacey hippie girls practising nude yoga on balcony, serves as a microcosm of 1970s decadence, its residents embodying the era’s drug-fuelled solipsism. Sterling Hayden’s scenery-chewing turn as Wade, a Hemingway-esque brute raging against his decline, injects pathos into the chaos. Yet Altman’s penchant for excess peaks in the film’s notorious violence. Augustine’s brutal assault on his girlfriend, played by non-actor Jo Ann Brody, is shocking less for its physicality than its casual cruelty. Later, Augustine returns with a battered Brody and his henchmen—including a pre-fame Arnold Schwarzenegger—to humiliate her further. These scenes, absent from Chandler’s novel, underscore the film’s nihilism, rejecting noir’s romanticised brutality for something uglier and more visceral.

Altman’s deviations from the source material, particularly the nihilistic ending, outraged Chandler purists. Whereas the novel concludes with Marlowe’s weary resignation, the film culminates in a burst of violence that feels both jarring and inevitable. This rejection of catharsis, coupled with the plot’s unresolved threads, alienated mainstream audiences. The film flopped commercially, dismissed as incoherent or pretentious. Yet its very refusal to conform—to genre expectations, to Chandler’s legacy, to Hollywood norms—has burnished its reputation among aficionados of New Hollywood.

The Long Goodbye is a film of exhilarating contradictions: a detective story without a mystery, a noir drenched in sunlight, a Chandler adaptation that subverts its source. Its flaws are undeniable—the miscast Gould, the narrative incoherence, the gratuitous violence—yet they coalesce into a perversely compelling whole. For all its frustrations, the film captures the existential aimlessness of post-1960s America, its protagonist a befuddled everyman in a world devoid of meaning. While it may not rank among Chandler’s finest cinematic adaptations (Hawks’ The Big Sleep eclipses it in craft and influence), it remains the most audacious—a flawed, fascinating experiment that rewards patience and multiple viewings. In the pantheon of New Hollywood, The Long Goodbye stands as a testament to an era when directors dared to fail spectacularly, crafting messy masterpieces that defy easy categorisation. For better or worse, it is unforgettable.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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