These days if we say Film Noir people will usually say it's a dated film genre or if you know much about the genre people will ask you how old you really are but nevertheless if you are a talented director like Robert Altman was you could find a way to reinvent the it in your own way. That is what he did on Raymond Chandler's hard boiled novel "The Long Goodbye" which he adapted on screen.
The story starts one night in Los Angeles when a sleeping Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is awakened by his wily cat who seemed to be hungry, this prompted him to drive to a nearby supermarket to buy a certain brand of cat food that only his cat eats accompanied by a sleepy rendition of "The Long Goodbye" theme.
His drive to the market is then inter cut by the arrival of his "close" friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) who asks to drive him to Tijuana in Mexico. Nothing seemed peculiar during the trip as Marlowe drops Lennox off, in his return home he gets questioned, picked up and interrogated by cops asking of the whereabouts of Lennox who apparently murdered his wife the same night. He was locked up for 3 days with another jailbird named Dave (David Carradine) echoing Manson and was released only to find out that Lennox committed suicide. After his release he was hired by Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt), the blonde trophy wife of Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden) a Hemingway type writer who has disappeared.
"C'mon dog your supposed to get outta the way!"
He was able to track down Roger on an insane asylum who is being treated by an apparent quack Dr. Verringer and was able to persuade him to bring him home. He was able to help the Wade's and all seemed okay until the arrival of a Scorsese-esque gangster in his doorstep named Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell) who is psychotic enough to hurt the woman he cares about just to prove his viciousness. He asks Marlowe to give him the money that the dead Lennox owed him which Marty thought he had, after the ruckus in his home he tails Marty and his thugs in his car and leads to the home of Eileen Wade herself. Apparently his hiring by the seductive Malibu blonde and the arrival of the Mean Streets gangster is not all a coincidence as he tries to put the pieces together before his time runs out.
In this film Altman was able to re imagine the genre of film noir as more surreal and quirky than it's usually played, the setting has changed from concrete jungles and dusty desolate highways and is replaced by present day 1973 Los Angeles filled with naked chicks, social parties and references to Golden Age Hollywood (the Walter Brennan impersonation was hilarious). Here Marlowe is not the tough talking hard boiled detective but a younger more modern version living in modern day Los Angeles with a bunch of hippy exhibitionists next door emphasizing him as the only dated character in the film. But even though the character is shown as old and dated this is still a more modern offbeat portrayal because apart from the other Marlowe's here is a detective who seemed more amused rather than pissed off in the tangled situation he is in. Gould's Marlowe is able to look in the perspective of a man lost in time allowing himself to walk in and bumble in certain situations with a wide eyed enthusiasm of a school boy which is a departure from other film noirs.
Aside from the brilliant casting of Gould is the impressive supporting cast most notably of Film noir vet Sterling Hayden who's portrayal of the has been writer is nothing short of marvelous. Hayden is of my favorite actors and I must say one of the most underrated having starred in 7 or 8 classic films playing either the lead or the heavy. Nina Van Pallandt was perfectly cast as the would be femme fatale and alibi, her role perfectly suited her since she was a mistress herself and for a time was involved with infamous fake writer Clifford Irving. The rest of the cast was also brilliant with Mark Rydell portraying the out of place gangster who seemed to come out of Scorsese's "Mean Streets" and Henry Gibson who played the diminutive but determined Verringer who was the only one who can slap the sense out of the hulking Roger Wade.
I would strongly recommend this film to Noir fans and to other cinephiles because Altman's direction alone is worth the watch, in this noir the "Marlboro Man" who smokes a lot and has runs in with LA cops, gangsters and Malibu trophy wives is a movie that is hard to say goodbye to.
Hooray for Hollywood!
Grade: A+
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