The Long Goodbye (1973)

Film: The Long Goodbye (1973)
Stars: Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Mark Rydell, Henry Gibson, Jim Bouton
Director: Robert Altman
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the Month of June, as a birthday present to myself, we'll be profiling 15 famous film noir movies I've never seen (my favorite film genre).  Look at the bottom of this review for some of the other movies we've profiled.

We're now going to be moving away from the classical era of Film Noir, which ended in the late 1950's when movies like Touch of Evil (possibly the last great "classic" film noir movie ever made, and just one of the greatest films ever made in general), and move into the neo-noir style that would emerge in the 1960's with films like The Manchurian Candidate.  Noir as a genre became less of a mainstay and more of a throwback, a way to capitalize on a Hollywood glamour long-lost, and would pop up occasionally in the decades that followed, but with none of the consistency of the 1940's & 50's.  For the last two entries in this series, we're going to take a look at two of the most well-known examples of neo-noir, ending our run in the early 1980's, though of course the genre would continue (we still see examples like Shutter Island, Inherent Vice, and the John Wick trilogy today).  First up is The Long Goodbye.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, one of Robert Altman's many celebrated films of the 1970's focuses on Philip Marlowe, a character we saw earlier this month played by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep but is here portrayed by Elliott Gould, in a comeback role of sorts after being blackballed by Hollywood for his diva histrionics during the filming of What's Up Doc.  Marlowe, in the film's opening scenes (including an hilarious sequence with his cat, who runs away and never returns about ten minutes into the picture), helps his friend Terry (Bouton, who was far better known as a pitcher for the Yankees than an actor) run to Mexico after a dust-up with his wife.  It turns out Terry may have killed his wife, though Marlowe doesn't believe it of his friend, but he doesn't have time to look into this too fully after he's brought in for questioning by the police, as he's hired by Eileen Wade (van Pallandt) to find her husband Roger (Hayden), who seems to be in some sort of cult run by an evil Dr. Verringer (Gibson).  Marlowe is also being blackmailed by a violent hood Marty (Rydell, in one of his occasional acting roles, though he's best known for directing movies like Cinderella Liberty and On Golden Pond) for money that Terry supposedly ran off with.

The movie runs the line pretty thinly between a proper noir and a parody of the genre.  Casting Gould, who is so good at comedy, in the lead makes this line blurrier, as does the weird juxtaposition between Marlowe's behavior and those of the people around him.  Marlowe smokes in literally every scene of the movie, something none of the rest of the health-conscious beach bodies (there's literally a sea of women who are in various states of undress next door to Marlowe who do yoga & run a candle-dipping store) will indulge.  Marlowe feels of a different time, and you can see that in the ways that Altman uses proper violence in the picture.  There's a scene where Marty is trying to show Marlowe that he's serious about getting his money (the money Terry apparently took) and to prove it, he horribly mutilates his beautiful girlfriend Jo Ann (Jo Ann Brady).  This recalls in a lot of ways The Big Heat where Lee Marvin scars Gloria Grahame as punishment for helping his enemy, but here it's done completely at random, and you actually see Brady's face as it bleeds, Marty not seeming to care what he's done to his "love."  Combined with a musical motif that riffs on classic noir (both by using "Hooray for Hollywood" with a healthy level of irony at the beginning & end of the picture, as well as having a running joke where John Williams-composed song "The Long Goodbye" is rearranged in every musical genre imaginable), it's clear that Altman didn't want to make a more traditional film, instead skewering the genre.

(Weird side story-in true "let's cast a bunch of non-professional actors" fashion that seems employed here with Bouton, Rydell, and Arnold Schwarzenegger in only his second screen role as a mute hitman, Brady was actually the waitress for Altman & Gould at a restaurant when they were shooting, and they cast her in the movie because they thought she was beautiful.  She assumed it was a joke because they didn't have money to pay for their bill at the time since they'd just come from the beach.  This is her only film appearance.)

The problem is that the spoof isn't that funny, and meanders too much if this is supposed to be a proper parody.  It's Altman, so there's still moments of genius-Gibson's great as the creepy doctor, and Rydell is fun & manic in a way that Joe Pesci would perfect years later in GoodFellas, but the movie doesn't quite work, and feels lax, particularly as we catch the twists toward the end of the picture.  It turns out that Terry was alive the whole time, actually tricking Marlowe, and was having an affair with Eileen whom he is going to run off with now that her husband had committed suicide and she's inherited his massive estate.  The film ends with Marlowe killing Terry, but it feels out-of-the-blue.  Gould has played him like a carefree slacker for so much of the film, it's hard to understand why he cares that much that Terry screwed up his life for a while.  The clever, interesting touches make the film passable for sequences, but it's lesser Altman and it's not wink-y enough to feel like it's taking the piss out of the noirs of the 1950's.

Previous Films in the Series: Sweet Smell of Success, The Killing, The Big Heat, Pickup on South Street, Gun Crazy, Night and the City, In a Lonely Place, They Live By Night, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, The Killers, The Woman in the Window, The Big Sleep