During a documentary extra on the DVD version of The Long Goodbye, director Robert Altman says he called Elliott Gould’s version of Phillip Marlowe “Rip Van Marlowe” because it’s like the iconic 1940’s detective character fell asleep for 30 years and awoke in the 1970s.
True to form, the opening scene shows Marlowe being jolted out of a deep sleep. Gould plays Marlowe as though he has stumbled out of hibernation and is completely baffled by everything going on around him. He does, however, take it with a 70s stoned indifference.
The film opens with interconnecting scenes between Phillip Marlowe and Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton). The soundtrack plays the same song through both scenes, but in completely different styles. Over Marlowe’s scenes the music is soft and jazz-like, while when Lennox is on screen it becomes more edgy, more rock-influenced. It is a brilliant way to introduce characters and give us a sense of who they are.
This is not Howard Hawk’s Raymond Chandler. Gone are the dark shadows, and production code of film noir. The sex and violence is no longer hidden under innuendo and suggestion. Here Marlowe’s neighbors are drug-ingesting nudists. This is Altman’s subversion of a genre.
This is definitely a Robert Altman picture. There are plenty of trademark long shots, and overlapping dialogue. He is less interested in the Chandler story, than in a sense of style and the juxtaposition of classically moral 1930s detective in the amoral times of the swinging 1970s.
The story loosely follows Raymond Chandler’s novel. Marlowe drives his friend, Lennox, to the Tijuana border only to return home to an apartment full of cops ready to arrest him for aiding and abetting Lennox, who is suspected of murdering his wife. Meanwhile Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt) hires Marlowe to find her alcoholic husband who has disappeared. Between the cops and the missing husband Marlowe is accosted by local gangsters who want the money Lennox owes them. The three stories meet and interconnect in an ending that is vastly different from the novel.
Article comments
1 - Rodney Welch
I'm one of the few who like both book and film. It's one of those adaptations that is wildly different from its source material, but that works on its own terms.
2 - Mat Brewster
I'm right there with you Rodney. I love every word Chandler ever wrote but this film, though very different, was very enjoyable.