The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Robert Altman
Produced by	Elliott Kastner Jerry Bick
Written by	Story: Raymond Chandler Screenplay: Leigh Brackett
Starring	Elliott Gould Nina Van Pallandt Sterling Hayden
Music by	John Williams
Cinematography	Vilmos Zsigmond
Editing by	Lou Lombardo
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	March 7, 1973 (U.S.A.)
Running time	112 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$1,700,000

The Long Goodbye (1973), directed by Robert Altman, is a contemporary film noir adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s elegiac novel The Long Goodbye (1953), the screenplay is by Leigh Brackett, who adapted The Big Sleep for the 1946 film. The Long Goodbye features Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe, private eye, Sterling Hayden as alcoholic novelist Roger Wade, and Mark Rydell as gangster Marty Augustine.

Unlike the novel, occurring in the 1950s, the cinematic version of The Long Goodbye occurs in the 1970s — a mirror of the lifestyle and culture of Hollywood in the 1970s. In their genres, the novel and the film are "a study of a moral and decent man cast adrift in a selfish, self-obsessed society where lives can be thrown away without a backward glance ... and any notions of friendship and loyalty are meaningless".^[1]

Plot

Late one night, at about three o’clock in the morning, while trying to feed his recalcitrant, food-fussy ginger tom cat, private investigator Philip Marlowe (Gould) is visited by his best friend, Terry Lennox (Bouton), who asks for a lift — from Los Angeles to the Californian–Mexican border at Tijuana, Mexico; he obliges. On returning home, Marlowe is awaited by two police department detectives, who, to him, accuse Terry Lennox of having murdered his rich wife, Sylvia Lennox. Disbelieving his best friend is a murderer, Marlowe refuses them answers; they arrest him. After three days in jail, the police release him, because Terry Lennox committed suicide in Mexico; an open-and-shut case to the police and the press, but the “official facts” do not sit right with Marlowe.

Later, he is hired, by Eileen Wade (Pallandt), the platinum-blonde trophy wife of the alcoholic Roger Wade (Hayden), a prominent novelist with writers' block, whose exaggerated, he-man, 'Papa' Hemingway persona is proving self-destructive. She asks that he find her husband, who, despite such regular alcoholic binges and days-long disappearances, now seems to be missing, not merely gone. In the course of investigating Mrs Wade’s missing-husband case — visiting the sub-culture of private detoxification clinics for rich alcoholics and drug addicts — Marlowe learns that the Wades (Roger and Eileen) knew the Lennoxes (Terry and Sylvia) socially, and — later — that there is more to Terry’s Mexican suicide, and the murder of his wife, Sylvia.

This section requires expansion.

Cast

• Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe
• Nina Van Pallandt as Eileen Wade
• Sterling Hayden as Roger Wade
• Mark Rydell as Marty Augustine
• Henry Gibson as Dr. Verringer
• David Arkin as Harry
• Jim Bouton as Terry Lennox
• Arnold Schwarzenegger, in an early role, as one of gangster Augustine’s thugs.

Background

The story and plot of the 1973 cinematic adaptation deviate drastically from those of the 1953 novel; screenplay writer Leigh Brackett took many literary liberties with the story, plot, and characters of The Long Goodbye in adapting it — at story’s end, Philip Marlowe’s killing his best friend, Terry Lennox, is a major plot and character departure from the novel, being, as it is, an incident borrowed from a Dirty Harry (1971) script; the father of millionairess Sylvia Lennox is not in the film’s storyline; Roger Wade’s murder is a suicide in the film; and gangster Marty Augustine and his subplots are entirely cinematic creations.

The Long Goodbye satirises Hollywood stereotypes, opening and closing with the original version of the "Hooray for Hollywood" (1937) song in establishing mood, time, and place with an image of old Hollywood Hills architectural art, then panning to a dressed, sleeping Philip Marlowe, P.I., in the 1970s; “Rip van Marlowe″ is a relic knight-errant from the 1940s transplanted to the contemporary world of the 1970s. In the event, under police interrogation, Marlowe, himself, alludes to the culture-shift, asking: “Is this where I’m supposed to say, What's all this about?, and he says, Shut up! I ask the questions? ”, whilst smoking a cigarette; in health-conscious California, Marlowe lights a cigarette in his every scene, being the sole smoker among the characters.

"Rip van Marlowe" maintains his quintessential American iconography that Chandler first laid down in his novels. In addition to the 1948 Lincoln Continental Convertible Cabriolet that Marlowe drives, Gould also wore a tie with American Flags on it (the tie looks plain red in the movie due to Zsigmond's post-flashing).^[2]

One of the film's interesting experiments is the use of one theme song throughout, bookended by the 1930s "Hooray for Hollywood" track. The song "The Long Goodbye" is heard as jazz theme, supermarket Muzak, Mexican funeral march, piano bar tinkling--wherever Marlowe goes, the song follows. In one scene we actually see a pianist in the midst of writing it.

Director Robert Altman was always more concerned with mood and place than plot, and here he anchors Marlowe in one of Hollywood's most unique, tucked-away landmarks, the distinctive High Tower Apartments on High Tower Drive, just south of the Hollywood Bowl, with its Italian tower in front containing an elevator. If you're in Hollywood you can drive there right now--turn west on Camrose from Highland Boulevard, drive up to Hightower Place, turn right, and there it is up at the end of the street--and very little has changed in the nearly 40 years since the film was shot there. Since about 25% of The Long Goodbye was shot in or around the Hightower Apartments. it qualifies as one of its leading characters.

For the story’s requisite, psychologic effect of cultural dislocation, the Californian world of The Long Goodbye often is over-bright and washed out, its colours weak; director Altman and cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond, to that effect photographed the film with flashed (delberately partially exposed) film stock, and through windows, a bird cage, et cetera. Originally, the director’s friend, Dan Blocker (“Hoss” in Bonanza, on television) was to play “Roger Wade”, but died before filming; The Long Goodbye is in memoriam to him.

Production

Producers Jerry Bick and Elliott Kastner bought the cinematic rights to The Long Goodbye (1953) novel and made a production deal with the United Artists distribution company. They commissioned the screenplay from Leigh Brackett, and asked Howard Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich to direct it,^[3] both refused the offer, but Bogdanovich recommended Robert Altman, who, initially, was uninterested, until allowed to cast Elliott Gould as “Philip Marlowe” — despite the producers’ original choices being Robert Mitchum and Lee Marvin. Elliott Gould then was in professional disfavour, because of some failed films, e.g. A Glimpse of Tiger, a job in which he bickered with co-star Kim Darby, fought with director Anthony Harvey, and acted erratically.^[3] Consequently, he hadn't worked in two years; nevertheless, the director had faith in the actor, and he convinced producer Bick that Gould suited the role. To wit, for the job, United Artists had Elliott Gould undergo the statutory employment medical examination and a psychological examination attesting his mental stability.

Director Altman based his screenplay research upon the Raymond Chandler Speaking letters collection, not the 1953 novel, and had the production team read them. In the article, “Robert Altman: American Innovator”, about the letters collection, he says: “But he [Chandler] used this thread to hang about sixty thumbnail essays on, so, the real interest in Raymond Chandler, to me, were those essays. We tightened the plot up; I dropped half the characters, probably; then I used that line to hang a bunch of film essays on”. The most significant change the director and the screenwriter effected was the story’s ending, Brackett remembers: “The original ending, the one in the novel, was pretty inconclusive, and didn’t please any of us, so, we thought we’d go for broke, and see what happened”.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack of The Long Goodbye features two songs, “Hooray for Hollywood” and the eponymous “The Long Goodbye”, composed by John Williams and Johnny Mercer. Every occurrence of that song is arranged differently, from hippie chant, to supermarket muzak, to radio music, effectively achieving the correct mood for the hero’s encounters with eccentric Californians, while pursuing his case. The score is on CD, released by Varese Sarabande, with John Williams’s Fitzwilly score.

Critical reception

Re-release poster by Jack Davis.

Initial reviews of The Long Goodbye were mixed, and income was poor, because of the unconventional story, plot, and character changes from the novel. Sight and Sound and Film Quarterly attacked the depiction of private detective Philip Marlowe: “one can not satirize or destroy a hero image until one defines it”. (Gerald Plecki, “Robert Altman”) Time magazine's Jay Cocks wrote, "Altman's lazy, haphazard putdown is without affection or understanding, a nose-thumb not only at the idea of Philip Marlowe but at the genre that his tough-guy-soft-heart character epitomized. It is a curious spectacle to see Altman mocking a level of achievement to which, at his best, he could only aspire".^[4]

Consequent to that initial, negative critical reaction, United Artists withdrew the film from distribution, then analyzed the reviews for six months, concluding the failure was the misleading advertising campaign promoting the movie as a "detective story" — emphasizing the “Raymond Chandler” and “Philip Marlowe” names — to a too-narrow cinephile audience, thus, a new, mainstream advert campaign; Altman explained: “I had to prepare audiences for a movie that satirizes Hollywood and the entire Chandler genre. So I went to Mad magazine, and asked Jack Davis, the artist, to come up with a cartoon approach”.^[5] United Artists spent $40,000, and the New York City première was profitably and critically successful.^[5] Vincent Canby noted: “Don’t be misled by the ads, The Long Goodbye is not a put-on. It’s great fun and it’s funny, but it’s a serious, unique work".^[6] Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and praised Elliott Gould's "good performance, particularly the virtuoso ten-minute stretch at the beginning of the movie when he goes out to buy food for his cat. Gould has enough of the paranoid in his acting style to really put over Altman's revised view of the private eye".^[7] Ebert's opinion of the movie would later grow, as he eventually included it on his list of great films.

The film remained unpopular, and earned poorly in the rest of the U.S.; nevertheless, The New York Times listed The Long Goodbye in its “Ten Best List” for film for that year, while Vilmos Zsigmond was awarded the National Society of Film Critics’ prize as “Best Cinematographer”. Ebert later ranked it among his "Great Movies" collection and wrote, "Most of its effect comes from the way it pushes against the genre, and the way Altman undermines the premise of all private eye movies, which is that the hero can walk down mean streets, see clearly, and tell right from wrong".^[7] Rotten Tomatoes rates the film 96% “Fresh”, based on 23 reviews.^[8]

See also

• List of American films of 1973

References

External links

• The Long Goodbye at the Internet Movie Database.
• The Long Goodbye at Allmovie
• The Long Goodbye at the TCM Movie Database
• The Long Goodbye at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Long Goodbye at Box Office Mojo