Tue 20 Dec 2016
A Book! Movie!! Review by Dan Stumpf: RAYMOND CHANDLER – The Long Goodbye / Film (1973).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[12] Comments
RAYMOND CHANDLER – The Long Goodbye. Houghton Mifflin, hardcover, 1954. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and soft, including Pocket 1044, 1955.
THE LONG GOODBYE. United Artists, 1973. Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Mark Rydell, Henry Gibson, David Arkin, Jim Bouton. Screenplay by Leigh Brackett, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler. Director: Robert Altman.
I discovered Raymond Chandler back in High School, re-read him after College, and still dip into his work now and again. But I’ve kind of resisted re-visiting The Long Goodbye, which I recalled as somewhat flabby and overrated. Well, I approached it again a few years ago with interest and a bit of trepidation, wondering if I’d finish it. Then in the first couple pages I came across the line “She gave him a look that should have stuck out his back four inches,” and my ticket was stamped for the ride.
I wouldn’t call Goodbye flabby; it is/was over-rated by critics impressed by Chandler’s carping John-D-MacDonald-style about the society we live in, the sorry state of television and gays in the art world — all much less impressive fifty-odd years later. Goodbye lacks the vigor of The Big Sleep, and it’s not as poignant as The High Window, but Chandler keeps it moving with his own often-imitated prose and lively characters like Big Willie Magoon and Mendy Menendez, a flamboyant gangster who gives the piece a sense of motion even when there’s not much going on. I have to say, though, Goodbye really needs these colorful touches, because this plot re-e-ally takes its time unspooling. In all, I’m glad I took another look at it, but it’s far from his best.
In 1973 Robert Altman and Leigh Brackett (who co-adapted The Big Sleep for the movies in ’45) made a movie of The Long Goodbye which was generally scorned by critics, savaged by Chandler fans and ignored by the public — I’ve always loved it.
In those days before noir came back in style, it was artistically impossible to do a hard-boiled mystery like they used to – look at the sorry attempts with James Garner and Robert Mitchum – so Altman/Brackett turned “Raymond Chandler’s savagely disenchanted outlaw-within-the-law†(Bosley Crowther) or the “Knight Without Meaning†(Charles Gregory) into a faintly comic, out-of-step icon.
The sensitivity is still there, along with the Instant Bullshit Detector, but the showy hardness is replaced by bemused detachment and Popeye-mutter. It works, enacted by Elliott Gould and a superb cast including Nina Van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, director Mark Rydell (great in the flashy-gangster role) Henry Gibson(!) and Arnold Schwarzenegger(try to spot him.)
I’m not a big fan of the late Robert Altman, but (as yet another critic pointed out) this movie shares a lot of qualities with Alphaville and Point Blank: dis-location of space and time, use of décor as landscape and landscape as décor, absurd violence, and stock characters who refuse to act like stereotypes… in all a film kinky, off-beat and surprisingly faithful.
As an interesting sidelight, Long Goodbye was done for television in 1954, or thereabouts with Dick Powell as Marlowe on an hour-long show called Climax – the same show that first did Casino Royale.
And another interesting bit: When this film came out I was dating two women, and dating them pretty seriously — seriously enough that I couldn’t afford to keep it up very long, so I took them to The Long Goodbye (on different nights; this was the 70s, not the 90s) to see how they reacted: One loved it, the other asked me how I could possibly enjoy such a film, and told me never to take her to another like it.
In due course, I married the second one.
December 20th, 2016 at 11:58 pm
The Climax series, which was important at the time, went out live, and in addition to Dick Powell, featured Teresa Wright and Caesar Romero. It was first rate, but had the distinction of actor Tris Coffin rising from the onscreen dead, unintentionally, when he thought the camera was somewhere else. As for the Elliott Gould version, there were good reasons critics and audiences agreed.
December 21st, 2016 at 12:22 am
I’ve seen the movie several times. I’m a big fan of Raymond Chandler so I’m always interested in all the film adaptations, even the ones that misfire.
In 1973 when I first saw the film, I did not like it at all. I wanted a serious version of the novel, not a smart ass black comedy as directed by Altman and played by Elliot Gould.
I last saw the movie a couple years ago and I gave it 5 out of 10, which means I thought it was ok but nothing special. I struck me very much as a film of its time. It could be in the running for a film that represents the 1970’s.
In other words I thought the film to be very dated.
December 21st, 2016 at 3:41 am
I can’t give the movie more than a ‘C minus’ myself. There are parts of it I enjoy very much — strangely enough it is one of those movies you cannot watch just once — but Elliot Gould’s fumble-mumble performance does it for me every time.
December 21st, 2016 at 11:39 am
I have a first edition with dust jacket of THE LONG GOODBYE. Unfortunately it’s ex-library and counts as only a reading copy. But I see that I’ve read the novel 4 times starting in the 1960’s and last time in 2009.
Each time I rated it as “Great” but always with the note that it was not as excellent as Chandler’s first 5 novels. But “Great” is still great…
December 21st, 2016 at 12:46 pm
The first of the Robert Mitchum films, Farewell My Lovely was both well received and successful. The second, The Big Sleep failed to generate interest on both counts, probably due to London locations and the directorial choices of Michael Winner. Whose work is truly despicable.
December 21st, 2016 at 1:47 pm
I’m an admirer of Altman and of this film, whereas Chandler himself I like less an less every time I try to reread him – like his school-fellow Wodehouse, but without the wit and with syrup. The interesting thing with the film is the way Marlowe is slowly pulled out of his “bemused detachment” into the same world – and way of looking at and responding to it – as the other characters so that the final twist is both astonishing and inevitable.
December 21st, 2016 at 8:39 pm
I saw this when it first came out in ’73.
Roger Ebert, who usually reviewed Altman on autopilot, gave The Long Goodbye a curiously lukewarm writeup (years later, he upgraded it to his Great Movies series). I was never sure why (either way).
All I knew at the time was that Sterling Hayden was a last-minute replacement for Dan Blocker, who’d died during pre-production.
For the rest, it seemed to be an exercise in stunt casting:
– Nina Van Pallandt was best known at the time for her participation in Clifford Irving’s ‘Howard Hughes memoir’ hoax.
– Jim Bouton (Terry Lennox) got his role just after his release from the Houston Astros, while his book Ball Four was still on the best-seller list.
– Henry Gibson had only left Laugh-In the season before, and people still associated him with the gentle characters he’d played thereon.
– Mark Rydell was having his major success as a director at this point; nobody remembered that he’d started out as an actor on As The World Turns a decade before (when his character was killed off, CBS was deluged with protest calls and mail).
– And then there was that Austrian weightlifter guy …
When I saw Long Goodbye at a plex at Marina city in Chicago (since closed), the first thing I noticed was Jack Sheldon’s rendition of the theme song – which ultimately was repeated in endless variation at different times in the movie.
This was a typical ’70s movie gimmick: something that the “film buffs” could congratulate themselves on noticing.
Some people in the audience were taken aback by the meanness of Henry Gibson’s doctor; the scene where Gibson slaps the twice-his-size Sterling Hayden in the face – and Hayden just stands there and takes it – brought out a few audience gasps.
Mark Rydell’s Coke-bottle scene got a similar reaction; this was the New ’70s Cinema (or something).
What I’m saying (I think) is that a Saturday matinee audience in ’73 didn’t know what the hell to make of The Long Goodbye – we came expecting a detective movie, and we got … ?
Since that time, I saw a lot of Altman movies, and I freely admit that I never really got him.
Why would Bob Altman always make movies where he held the subject matter in contempt?
Of course, he could always depend on Ebert for a guaranteed rave, especially late in their careers …
December 21st, 2016 at 10:49 pm
For me having Marlowe kill Lennox and the dance away pushed this film into a D category. I liked Gould. He was great reading Chandler in audiobookform, but this film…
Okay, Chandler was a homophobe and Altman didn’t like him. Fine, make another damn movie, I don’t see how Altman destroyed Chandler, his stated goal. He just made a bad movie.
All this one proved was that Altman made a bad movie.
Dan,
Strictly my take on it. I like lots of movies other people hate. I just think this one failed as entertainment and “destroying” Chandler and Marlowe.
December 22nd, 2016 at 9:26 am
This movie made me want to learn to play the harmonica and sing “Mammy.” Could have sworn that we saw it together and both liked it BIG TIME. Watched it again about a year ago and it still is a big favorite!
December 28th, 2016 at 12:07 pm
I don’t know whose version of The Long Goodbye you read, but evidently it was not Raymond Chandler’s. The line is “The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.†Where you got “and my ticket was stamped for the ride,†I dunno. No such line can be found in this novel. The Long Goodbye transcends detective fiction and, in my opinion, is a strong candidate for the Great American Novel.
December 29th, 2016 at 5:04 pm
You’re right about the quote. It’s a case of a misplaced quotation mark. Thanks for pointing it out. I’ll fix it right away!
February 27th, 2017 at 3:02 pm
In the DVD bonus material, they mention that the approach to the movie was’Rip Van Marlowe’, as if the character had been asleep since the 50s while everything else had advanced into the 70s. That was why Marlowe had an old style suit, drove that vintage car, and even used wooden matches.