Title: The Long Goodbye
Rating: 4 Stars
I have a confession to make. I don’t really like the films of either Robert Altman or Elliott Gould. Because they were both on the AFI top 100, I’ve watched Nashville and MASH. I found Nashville to be long, boring, and self indulgent. In the year 2022, the sexism and racism makes MASH well nigh unwatchable. I could kind of understand if the sexism and racism was somehow transgressive in service to a larger point, but when I watched it (admittedly a couple of years ago), it sure seemed to me that its purpose was more adolescent in nature. It struck me as a weirdly mean spirited film.
The Long Goodbye has been on my radar for a while as a well recognized example of neo-noir. Due to my previous experiences with Altman / Gould, I was not particularly looking forward to watching it.
Now having done so, I have to say that I’m pleasantly surprised.
Having previously watched several classic neo-noir films (eg Body Heat, Basic Instinct, The Postman Always Rings Twice (Nicholson / Lange version)), I have slightly mixed feelings about the genre. Since I’m a fan of noir, I do enjoy watching neo-noir films. My concern is around exactly how ‘neo’ the neo-noir actually is. Sure, the violence is much more graphic. The sex and nudity is much more explicit. With increased time and budget, the films look much better. With modern trained actors, the acting is much better.
All of that is true. However, at the end of the day, these films seem to have been somewhat constrained by the genre that was defined in the 1940s and 1950s.
This is the strength of Altman’s The Long Goodbye. It takes the noir genre and, while still keeping it recognizable, reinvents it.
For instance, he transplants the 1953 setting into the 1970s. 1970s Southern California is quite distinct from the 1950s. Chandler’s next door neighbors are a group of young usually topless women doing yoga and other new age practices. Everyone is dressed in pastel leisure suits. At parties, people pass around dried apricots as snacks. The houses are classic 1970s LA design.
In all of this, Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is a throwback. He always wears a suit and tie. Alone among the health freaks, he smokes incessantly. He drives a big old car from the 1940s. He seems to be a throwback to an earlier time.
But wait. This is not Chandler’s Marlowe. The film opens with an extended scene where Marlowe lovingly tends to a stray cat. His nubile next door neighbors treat him as a nonsexual friend (at one point he goes to the store to get brownie mix for them). He does not have a tough guy persona. When he’s arrested by the police, he doesn’t make wise cracks at them out of the side of his mouth like Chandler’s Marlowe would. Instead, he takes the fingerprint ink that they’ve refused to allow him to clean off and wipes his face with the ink, playing the part of the clown.
It’s not just Marlowe. The gangster that’s pushing Marlowe to recover his money is always dressed in pastel leisure suits. He affects a Southern California cool, not the rough guy swagger that you’d normally see. Even so, it quickly becomes apparent that he’s actually a dangerous psychopath in a top position enabled by obsequious minions (including a very young Arnold Schwarzenegger).
In other acting, Sterling Hayden is brilliant as the always drunk Hemingwayesque, self destructive writer crippled by writer’s block. Apparently Hayden, himself drunk and / or stoned for the entire shooting, improvised all of his lines.
So, Marlowe is kind of inept. He doesn’t get the girl. He’s not really a fighter. However (spoiler alert for a 50 year old film), when he discovers that his good friend used Marlowe to escape to Mexico after killing his wife, Marlowe, without compunction, shoots him dead in cold blood. The last scene shows Marlowe, after the killing, skipping down the road.
This is not your father’s noir. I found it to be an interesting take on a pretty well trod genre.
As such, I think it was a great example of neo-noir.
dorkenstein 