When legendary screenwriter Leigh Brackett (known as “the Queen of Space Opera” and for her collaborations with Howard Hawks on films like Rio Bravo (1959), The Big Sleep (1946), and others) joined forces with Robert Altman, who was coming off acclaimed films like MASH (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), and Images (1972), to adapt Raymond Chandler’s dense, complex, and layered 1953 noir novel The Long Goodbye, the result was a bold, raw, and unconventional revisionist neo-noir masterpiece.
The film centers on a private investigator, Philip Marlowe (Elliot Gould), who is visited by his friend, Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton), in the middle of the night seeking his help with a ride to Tijuana, Mexico. The next day, Terry’s wife is found dead, and the police detain Marlowe for questioning about Terry’s whereabouts. After three days in jail, he is released after Mexican authorities report that Terry committed suicide, a story that Marlowe does not believe. Meanwhile, Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt), the wife of wealthy and alcoholic author Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden), hires Marlowe to find him. Marlowe discovers that the Wades were neighbors of the Lennoxes. At the same time, Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell), a powerful mob boss, pays a visit to Marlowe in search of the money Terry stole from him (Terry used to work for Marty) and is willing to go to any length to get it. As Marlowe pieces together the puzzle, he becomes embroiled in the world of wealthy alcoholics, ruthless gangsters, and deceitful friends, where loyalty is exposed as a dangerous illusion.
The film begins with an elaborate 10-minute sequence in which Marlowe is woken up at 3 a.m. by his cat, who wants food. After looking through the cabinets and realizing he’s out of cat food, he rushes to the store but can’t find the exact brand that the cat prefers. So he brings another brand and tries to trick the cat by transferring the food to the familiar can, but to no avail. The cat realizes it has been duped and eventually abandons Marlowe. The sequence ends with Terry Lennox arriving at his place and Marlowe driving him to Tijuana. I am mentioning the sequence in painstaking detail because it perfectly sets up the film. It introduces Philip Marlowe’s character, an eccentric, down-on-his-luck, chain-smoking, mumbling private eye living alone in 1970s Los Angeles. It also establishes the film’s leisurely pace, as Altman takes his time, letting us immerse ourselves in Marlowe’s world. Also, the cat fleeing when it does not get what it wants establishes a central theme of one-sided loyalty and betrayal.
Although The Long Goodbye consists of classic film noir elements like a private eye investigating a murder, betrayal, gangsters, moral corruption, and a code of honor, here Altman and Brackett discard most of the noir traits (along with many of the subplots, secondary characters, and the novel’s setting) and revise the film into their own version of neo-noir. Unlike classic film noirs, which typically feature tight plotting and plot-driven screenplays, The Long Goodbye unfolds at a deliberately slow pace, with a character-driven screenplay that follows Marlowe throughout the film. He is present literally in every scene of the film.
Secondly, neo-noir films are distinguished by chiaroscuro lighting, which employs stark contrasts between light and shadow to create a dark, moody, and atmospheric aesthetic. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and director Altman purposefully eschew that style in favor of pastel colors with a bluish undertone that are saturated and have low contrast. Altman had no interest in making The Long Goodbye look like a film noir from the 1940s. Instead of recreating that era shot for shot, he wanted it to feel like a faded memory of it—familiar, hazy, and just a little out of reach, the way old memories often are. Furthermore, the film lacks a femme fatale-type character who is seductive, murderous, manipulative, and scheming, as is common in the noir genre. Sure, Eileen is a femme fatale character in the novel, but the film portrays her as cool, attractive, enigmatic, and opportunistic rather than deadly and dangerous.
Another considerable change the filmmakers make from the novel is its central character. In many noir films, especially from the 1940s, Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe stands out as a cynical yet idealistic private investigator known for his sharp tongue and sarcastic one-liners. Marlowe is also portrayed as a chivalrous, stubborn, principled, and hard-boiled knight battling against a corrupt world. But you see none of those traits in Elliot Gould’s Philip Marlowe. The filmmakers reimagine Marlowe as a solitary, mumbling, rumpled, out-of-time loser who constantly mutters, “It’s okay with me,” as a resigned, passive response to almost every situation. He trusts people too easily, gets betrayed by them, and even messes up the case and draws a wrong conclusion, which he fixes in the end.
Throughout the film, he spends most of his time being pushed around and reacting to situations rather than acting and gaining control of them (something that the Marlowe of the 1940s noir films would rarely have allowed). As Altman himself stated, the Marlowe is presented in such a way that he has been sleeping for the past 20 years and awakens in the 1970s, in a changed world where a decent, loyal man is placed in a world full of selfish, self-obsessed people, where true friendship and loyalty have little value, and the classic private eye of the 1940s no longer fits. In a nutshell, by reworking the conventions of classic film noir, The Long Goodbye becomes a satirical neo-noir that mocks the romanticized myth of the tough-talking private eye while simultaneously taking aim at the superficial 1970s society that Marlowe finds himself navigating.
Despite its slow pacing, the film’s plot is compelling enough to keep us invested on several fronts. There’s Terry Lennox’s disappearance and his suicide in Mexico, Sylvia Lennox’s murder, Eileen hiring Marlowe to find her booze-addled, self-destructive husband Roger, and the gangster Marty Augustine relentlessly pressuring Marlowe to recover the money Terry stole from him. Wondering how all of these threads connect and eventually come together keeps you invested until the very end, culminating in a climax that is both genuinely shocking and unpredictable.
Even if it appears that the plot is stagnant at times, some scenes are absolutely gripping and immersive that will keep you captivated, such as the scene between Marlowe and Roger, which exposes the cracks in Roger and Eileen’s marriage and pulls Marlowe deep into the web of lies linking Wades and Lennoxes, or my personal favorite: the two tense encounters between Marlowe, Marty Augustine, and his goons as Marty relentlessly demands the money Terry stole from him. During the first encounter, Marty smashes a Coke bottle into his mistress’s face just to demonstrate how ruthless and intimidating he is. He then looks at Marlowe and delivers one of the film’s most memorable lines: “That’s someone I love. You, I don’t even like.”
In the second encounter, he orders everyone to strip naked, including himself, because he believes that people speak the truth when they are exposed and vulnerable. He also wishes to cut Marlowe’s penis so that he can tell the truth about the money. These scenes work so well because they feel realistic and organic. Altman’s signature overlapping dialogue makes conversations feel spontaneous rather than rehearsed, while the camera’s constant movement makes the viewer feel like an observer rather than a participant in a controlled dramatic frame.
The Long Goodbye was Elliot Gould’s comeback film after he was blackballed from the industry due to his erratic behavior on the set of “A Glimpse of Tiger” (which later became What’s Up, Doc? (1972)). But Altman insisted on giving him a chance, and now I can’t imagine anyone else playing this role. It’s one of the best performances of his career. Gould makes him likable, endearing, empathetic, and quietly heartbreaking. In addition, Mark Rydell’s portrayal of gangster Marty Augustine is absolutely unhinged and unpredictable, and he stands out in the film for his charisma, razor-sharp dialogue delivery, casual cruelty, and twisted sense of humor. The Long Goodbye is an absolute treat for Altman fans.
Check out the list of best neo-noir films of the 2020s here
The Long Goodbye (1973) movie links: IMDB, Letterboxd, Wikipedia
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