Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Leigh Brackett (based on the novel by Raymond Chandler)
Starring Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, and Sterling Hayden
Running Time: 1 hour and 52 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Now available on 4K blu-ray from Kino Lorber

by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer

Robert Altman’s favorite talking point about his 1973 neo-noir classic The Long Goodbye is the notion of “Rip Van Marlowe.” Essentially, following the Philip Marlowe character’s big screen breakout in the 1946 film noir masterpiece The Big Sleep, the character essentially went into hibernation and woke up in the hippy-haze of the early 1970s. Times changed, the character didn’t, and that asynchrony makes for movie magic. Where Humphrey Bogart filled Marlowe’s shoes with true hard nosed intensity in The Big Sleep, here Elliot Gould is cast against type to portray the platonic ideal of a private eye. It might be cinematic sacrilege, but I personally prefer Gould’s shambling and slovenly Marlowe to Bogie’s, but then again Robert Altman is one my personal Mount Rushmore of kino so I might be a little biased (plus as a Kansas City native I am contractually obliged to sing the praises of one of our favorite sons).

The story is your basic noir setup involving a dead woman, a bag of missing money, an alcoholic Hemingway-esque novelist who may or not be involved in the dead woman’s murder, and his femme fatale wife who knows more than she lets on. The script by legendary Hollywood screenwriter Leigh Brackett—who also penned The Big Sleep, in addition to such Hollywood classics as Rio Bravo and Star Wars: The Empire Strike Back--is an honest, rock-solid noir that could have been produced in the 1950s shortly after the novel’s publication with Bogart reprising the role of Marlowe, but what Robert Altman does with the script is much more interesting. One of the most potent images from the film is Elliott Gould’s shabby, perpetually chain-smoking Marlowe wading through the gaggle of topless hippie chicks who live next door to him attempting to get information about his missing cat, only to find that they’re all in some sort of yoga-induced trance. It’s a perfect distillation of this Marlowe’s 1950s sensibilities being fully out of place in the 1970s.

Altman makes you feel immersed in 1973. His camera is constantly moving and in addition to feeling like a voyeur looking in on Philip Marlowe’s misadventure while also feeling as lost as he does in this newfangled world covered in a thick haze of pot smoke, health food, and fad exercise routines. If you’ve seen Inherent Vice, you will immediately realize that noted Altman acolyte Paul Thomas Anderson (lovingly) swiped The Long Goodbye’s whole vibe for his picture. Elliot Gould is so good here I had a hard time even remembering what Bogart’s version of the character looked like. Gould is masterful at delivering a performance that injects a lot of humor into a story that is totally humorless by design. It’s a wonderful incongruity best exemplified by two scenes. In one, Gould’s Marlowe has been dragged into the police station for questioning about the dead woman and in his insolence, smears the ink on his hands from the fingerprinting on his face and mimes Al Jolson.

In another sequence Marlowe gives a guy tailing him (a representative of the man trying to recover the aforementioned big bag of money) directions to exactly where he’s going in case he loses the tail. The whole interaction is borderline slapstick, but this film never feels like a comedy, or a send-up to the noir genre, and it’s an excellent example of why Robert Altman is one of the great masters. There’s a lot going on here, but at the end of the day The Long Goodbye belongs in the same conversation as canonized film noir classics. Kino Lorber’s 4K transfer Blu-ray makes an already immersive film that much more immersive, and whether you’ve never seen it or haven’t seen it in a while, there’s no time like the present to take in this cult classic that is well on its way to becoming a true classic if it isn’t one already.