I first saw THE LONG GOODBYE when it first came out in 1973 and I didn’t like it. I REALLY didn’t like it. As a fan of Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe I found THE LONG GOODBYE to be an insult to the character. It wasn’t the fact that the movie was given a contemporary setting. James Garner’s 1969 MARLOWE was able to do that and it was very good. The problem is that the movie was directed by Robert Altman in his classic “New Hollywood” style which meant overlapping dialogue that you can’t follow, mumbled lines from Elliot Gould in the opening that makes Marlon Brando sound like a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and a stream of consciousness style of editing that is akin to being on drugs.
That was my impression of the movie in 1973. Flash forward to 2003 when the movie was released on DVD for its 30th anniversary. I watched it again and thanks to closed captioning/subtitles, I actually got to understand what the characters were saying so at least I knew what was going on and that was a big plus but there was still the cinematography and the editing to deal with so in the end I still didn’t like it. However a short feature on the disc called RIP VAN MARLOWE explains what director Altman was trying to convey which was dropping 50’s private eye Marlowe into early 1970s Los Angeles and watch how he reacts to it. It’s a valid concept but not if you have to watch a bonus feature to point that out to you.
The film underwent a number of alterations from its first conception. The original screenplay by Leigh Brackett (who had done THE BIG SLEEP back in 1946) went through several changes which included updating the character to the 1970s and completely changing the ending. For Marlowe purists the latter was unforgivable but Altman, ever the revisionist, said “I don’t give a damn about them”. That attitude pervades this adaptation as Altman is more concerned with showcasing the 1970s California lifestyle than he is in following Raymond Chandler’s book. Another change is that Altman wanted Dan Blocker of BONANZA fame to be the alcoholic writer but Blocker died suddenly and so Sterling Hayden got the role.
As mentioned earlier, the original DVD came out in 2003. The cover had a photo of Gould, gun in hand, walking along the Malibu sands. This gave the impression that it was going to be a traditional hard boiled detective yarn. When the movie was first released, that’s what the audience and the critics thought they were getting and when they didn’t, the film got poor reviews and tanked. It was re-released a few months later with a poster designed by MAD magazine artist Jack Davis signalling that it was intended as a satire and this time it did draw in the young, hip crowd it was aimed at. That poster art graces this excellent new Blu-Ray from Kino Lorber which, if you must watch TLG, is the way to view this movie.
The Capsule Critic 