THE LONG GOODBYE - Blu-ray reissue (UA, 1973) Kino Lorber
Upgrading Marlowe’s surroundings
from the slick and savvy 1940’s to the grit and grime of 70’s L.A. had its own ‘charm’.
Yet, Altman, who always reworked his movies as he ‘went along’, has ripped the
core from Leigh Brackett’s screenplay – if, one ever existed – condemning Marlowe
to an eccentric and chronically unraveling narrative that seems to have been
cobbled together from daily discussions on the set. In this, Brackett, who co-wrote
the screenplay to 1946’s The Big Sleep – along with William Faulkner, contributes
to The Long Goodbye an even more Chandler-esque air than Chandler. Arguably, she complicates an already
perilously convoluted story, heavily weighted in Chandler’s code of ethics for his
private eye, now plunged into an even more grotesquely corrupt world, discriminately
ditching whole portions of the book to augment and recalculated the trajectory
of the plot with a few darkly purposed acts of violence to appeal to the ‘then’
present pop culture, yet decidedly not in Chandler’s milieu. Had Chandler lived
to see the day, he would have likely found this Long Goodbye
unrecognizable. And Altman, in his prime, was decidedly known for such extemporaneity.
In a parallel universe, Altman and Chandler might have been drinking buddies;
each, imbued with a streak of fatalism, and both, nonconformists teetering on
their own genius, to have discovered success late in life. The Long Goodbye was
ill-received in its time, I suspect, as it deviates in its fidelity to Chandler’s
die-hard hawkshaw, but otherwise – and oddly so – remains irreverently faithful
to the tone and temperament of Chandler’s final masterwork, first published in
1953 and widely regarded as the author’s greatest novel. Without question, it
was Chandler’s most intimate into which he poured all of his own bitterness and
melancholia into that chivalrous alter ego, Marlowe, who traverses the dark alleys
and byways of L.A. to defend the honor of an old friend. The decidedly frosty
reception the picture received from audiences and New York magazine’s Judith
Crist left Altman depleted.
In refining the novel for the
screen, Leigh Brackett was to pare down Chandler’s plot considerably, and
introduce a more laissez-faire slant, in keeping with the 70’s liberated view
of sin and sex. And Altman, cleverly to refer to his private eye as Rip Van
Marlowe, saw him as a classy ‘good guy’ gone to seed, the proverbial fish-out-of-water,
chronically derailed, and occasionally to be thoroughly stumped when confronted
by the ‘new’ unscrupulousness and profligacy of a California barely recognizable
to the tales told by Chandler’s original hero. Instead of gun molls and
gangsters, we get flower-power hippies and naked yoga. Yep, there’s still a femme
fatale (every detective-based noir thriller needs one), Eileen Wade (Nina,
Baroness van Pallandt), and also a racketeer, Marty Augustine (ineffectually
realized by Mark Rydell) plus a pedestrian subplot involving some stolen money.
Sterling Hayden (in a role originally envisioned for Altman beloved, Dan
Blocker, who died suddenly just before filming, but would receive the picture’s
dedication) decidedly his own loon, perpetually boozed-up and ailing in his own
right, plays it to the hilt as chronically inebriated Hemmingway-esque author,
Roger Wade. The Long Goodbye could not survive without these elemental
characters of the old home guard. Alas, Elliott Gould plays Marlowe as a sardonic,
self-evasive and rather clumsy creature, constantly commenting on his own obsolescence
in Altman’s otherwise hermetically sealed homage to old-time Hollywood
nostalgia. This Marlowe skulks in bushes, is not above peeking into windows and
rants like a petulant teenager when things do not go his way, as is frequently
the case. Cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond pays his own testimonial to that
star-lit Mecca of yore, exporting a careworn color palette in soft focus to resonate
with the past. However, as a byproduct
of Altman’s own hard-bitten realism, The Long Goodbye also emerges as a sophisticated,
but steely tribute to the past, slashing into the tenets of an America, no
longer pie-eyed on its own post-war 50’s prosperity.
The plot here is telescopically
focused on the uber-wealthy sexpot, Eileen Wade who may or may have conspired
to murder her husband. Or did Roger legitimately walk into the California surf
and commit suicide while she incessantly flirted with Marlowe over dinner? Altman refrains from any hanky-panky to seal
the deal. In Chandler’s novel, Marlowe beds the rich bitch to his brief
pleasure, but ever-lasting detriment. This served as Eileen’s alibi after she
actually murders Roger in Chandler’s original. But Altman is more circumspect
here, and further muddies things by suggesting Roger, morose and drunk, really
did off himself. Deliberately clouding these murky waters, we get Marlowe’s
loyal involvement with the unscrupulous Terry Lennox, unworthy of their friendship,
who has something vaguely to do with Eileen and Marty Augustine. But exactly
who owes who something – probably money – is left open for discussion. And
further to obfuscate the plot, the money Marlowe eventually unearths in a
suitcase (to serve as this picture’s MacGuffin) is not actually the money owed.
Plot-wise, we are introduced to arrogant
playboy, Terry Lennox who gets his old pal, Philip Marlowe to drive him to
Tijuana. It’s all so innocent until the police arrest and jail Marlowe,
presumably for aiding and abetting a killer after the badly beaten remains of Lennox’s
wife, Sylvia turns up. But then we learn
Lennox has committed suicide in Mexico…or did he? Marlowe gets an unwelcomed
visitor - Marty Augustine, flanked by his formidable goon squad. Augustine believes
Marlowe bumped off Lennox and is presently hoarding the money that rightfully
belongs to him. This dovetails into the first shocking moment of brutality to
prove Marty’s point, as the gangster horribly disfigures his own mistress to
give Marlowe enough pause to rethink the cruel and calculating callousness of
the people he is playing ‘ball’ with now, and better inform his decision, regarding
the payout. Now, Marlowe tails Augustine
to the fashionable Malibu digs of Roger and Eileen Wade. After Roger bolts to a
sanitarium, Eileen hires Marlowe to get to the bottom of things. What some critics
found disconcerting in 1973 is how easily, particularly from this meticulously
crafted setup, Altman allows the plot from hereon in to simply lag, then lumber
along through a series of seemingly incohesive vignettes.
What remains fascinating are the
complications that dog Marlowe. Having broken into the private and posh detox
clinic where Roger is staying, Marlowe unearths a connection between the Wades,
Terry and Sylvia and Augustine. Marking his own investigation in Tijuana, where
authorities confirm a verdict of suicide for Terry, Marlowe crashes a party over
a disagreement regarding Roger’s unpaid bill for the treatment he received at
the clinic. Sometime later, Eileen and Marlowe are interrupted in their flirtations
by Roger, who wanders into the sea and drowns himself. Eileen confides her
husband was having an affair with Terry’s wife and infers Roger might have
murdered Sylvia in a drunken rage. Informing the police of as much, Marlowe is
told Roger was at the clinic at the time of the murder. Believing Eileen has
set him, Marlowe learns Augustine has reclaimed his ill-gotten gains and
observes as Eileen drives off from the gangster’s estate. Making chase on foot,
Marlowe is struck by oncoming traffic and hospitalized. After being given a
harmonica by a heavily bandaged patient in the next bed, Marlowe checks himself
out and hurries to Malibu, only to find the Wade estate up for sale and Eileen
gone. Bribing Mexican officials, Marlowe learns Terry’s suicide was faked. He
is alive and well and living in a rather posh villa. Confronting his ‘friend’,
Marlowe learns Terry did murder Sylvia as he was already having an affair with
Eileen. But when Terry gloats about Marlowe’s gullibility, Marlowe shoots him
dead. Departing the villa, Marlowe passes Terry on the road, knowing she is on
route to meet her lover, unknowing of his fate. Marlowe pulls out his harmonica
and begins to play, taking a rather sick pride in his handy work.
The Long Goodbye is a deftly
executed thriller whose appeal has exponentially grown since its rather tepid
reception from the critics in 1973. There are renewable virtues to be had here,
as Altman, in a quite ‘un-Altman-esque’ move, creates an atmosphere of tangible
cynicism his re-worked Marlowe comes to know, but never entirely comprehends.
Conspiring with Vilmos Zsigmond, Altman’s landscape here is neither traditional
California bohemian chic nor mid-70’s grit and grime as Zsigmond’s cinematography
imbues the visuals with a careworn texture, as if to tangibly expose the
opacity into which Marlowe’s blundering antihero rediscovers the vices of this
remade noir playground. Everything about Zsigmond’s layering of detail here
plots to fill the anamorphic frame with visual obstacles. And then, there is John
Williams and Johnny Mercer’s one-note wonder of a main title, Altman chronically
regurgitates in everything from a mariachi rendition to a door bell ring tone,
and, to no particular purpose other than, as oft has been speculated, to amuse
himself. Altman’s verve for overlapping dialogue creates yet another milkiness
in all of the script’s misdirection, fading in and out of scenes to tempt us
with what is actually going on, but never to unravel all of it until the penultimate
moment of realization for Gould’s garrulous and navel-gazing, goofball of a
gumshoe. Altman’s smoke and mirrors
approach to the material is resourceful, enough to make us momentarily forget
the glaring shortcomings in its actual plot, lacking a fully-formed tapestry of
events to become an ever-lasting classic.
The Long Goodbye falls smack center
in Altman’s 5-year reign as a devastatingly original director of influence,
between his cutting-edge and Oscar-winning political satire, M*A*S*H (1970)
and his even more shockingly on-point exposé on the country music scene – Nashville
(1975). Neither as prolific nor as moralizing nor even direct, The Long
Goodbye is a heat-stippled homage to the classic B-budgeted B&W noirs
of yore, brought kicking and screaming into the widescreen/Technicolor light.
In some ways, Leigh Brackett’s screenplay is to blame for the picture’s lack of
Altman-esque virtues – a run-of-the-mill whodunit in which misdirection is the
only thing the picture has going for it, apart from some brilliantly conceived
performances given throughout. Elliot Gould’s laid-back blunderer is the
biggest hurdle here, second only to Altman’s verve to expose how far California
culture and film industry to have spawned such immortal works of cinema art
throughout the 1940’s has sadly deteriorated in its sphere of influence. There
is no place left for the likes of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe here, only
Altman’s unreasonably aloof, nebbish and charm-free facsimile. Gould, coming
off an Oscar-nomination for Paul Mazursky's sex farce, Bob and Carol and Ted
and Alice (1969) and, in some ways, retrospectively, herein can be
considered curiously seditious yet moderately stimulating as this upside-down
reinvention of Chandler’s alter ego. And far from being a wash-out, Gould is particularly
proficient at recapturing Marlowe’s tart-mouthed ruggedness.
Alas, this Marlowe’s mental acuity needs
work. Less smart than sassy, but occasionally to exude a doggedly self-deprecating
sex appeal, Gould’s interpretation here offers up some magnificently weird and
shambling touches. In the end, The Long Goodbye emerges as an Altman
oddity. It’s still not quite the classic some revisionists of American cinema
would wish it to be, but it includes some of Altman’s most unique and downbeat
thematic and stylistic touches. And while it may be argued Altman, Leigh
Brackett and Gould have all taken Philip Marlowe down a peg or two, there is no
denying the picture it’s horrendously shocking moments of violence (not in
Chandler’s original novel) nor its enduring – if strange – appeal as a good ‘bad’
good movie. Altman uses Chandler only as his template, imbuing ‘his’ Long
Goodbye with a bleaker, foggier, dingier patina of moral turpitude.
There are no good guys here – not even Gould’s gumshoe – only figures of darkly
purposed and despicable intent, each out for what they can get. Altman and
Zsigmond whitewash even the poshest of these Malibu digs with a sort of unusual
decay. And, just for shits and giggles, look for a buff Arnold Schwarzenegger
in only his second screen appearance, shirtless, moustached and rippling, as a
bodyguard with no lines. Diverging significantly from Chandler’s novel, Leigh
Brackett’s artistic liberties evolve the characters while foreshortening the
plot (arguably, also ‘slight’ in Chandler’s original) – the latter, involving
blood money and a murdered heiress, a stock and pedestrian effort at best.
Throughout, Brackett’s adaptation pays its homages to Chandler. But she is also
forced to reconsider how far removed from that golden epoch in detective
literature the world has strayed since. As such, trash replaces flash and grit,
wit. Elliott Gould, in a role originally slated for either Lee Marvin or Robert
Mitchum, clearly relishes the part of Marlowe. Before The Long Goodbye wrapped,
he had sincerely hoped to reprise the role in a reboot of Chandler’s ‘The
Curtain’ (the author’s only never-to-be-filmed novel), cribbing from a
screenplay of his own design, retitled ‘It’s Always Now’. To date, the
project has not materialized.
Last year’s Blu-ray outing for The
Long Goodbye was Kino Lorber’s second bite at the apple, sporting a 4K
remaster with superior color saturation and depth of clarity. Contrast advances,
while still preserving Zsigmond and Altman’s original intent for a flatter
palette with tepid tones and texturing. This looks incredibly film-like and far
better than the milky mess of the 2014 Blu-ray. Altman’s desire for a stylized
image holds true here. The 2014 release just looked decades’ older than it
ought. Kino also upgraded the soundtrack to DTS 2.0 mono. It’s still flat and
uninspiring, as in keeping with the original theatrical release. In addition to
the original MGM DVD extras, all ported over here, Kino has shelled out for a
new comprehensive commentary by Tim Lucas. Also on tap, the 25-min. documentary
‘RIP Van Marlowe’ featuring star and director dishing the dirt on their
memories of making the picture, 20-mins. with editor/producer, David Thompson, 15-mins.
with Zsigmond, and another 15-mins. with Tom Williams on Raymond Chandler and
Maxim Jakubowski on hard-boiled fiction, plus trailers from hell, radio & TV
spots and two theatrical trailers. Savaged by the critics, who labeled it as a ‘lazy,
haphazard putdown’, with Gould the brunt of everyone’s venom, The Long
Goodbye was unceremoniously yanked from distribution, its New York premiere
canceled until a new $400,000 marketing campaign could be launched. Viewed
today, The Long Goodbye emerges as something better, more involved and
original than that, though it remains not quite the masterpiece some would have
preferred from Altman in his prime. The Blu-ray is excellent. Judge and buy
accordingly.
FILM RATING (out
of 5 – 5 being the best)
3
VIDEO/AUDIO
4.5
EXTRAS
4
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