The Long Goodbye"What are friends for?" It's never really a question, but a statement, an acknowledgement of helping one another out, because you'd expect the same. One late night/early morning in Los Angeles--after a failed attempt to procure gourmet canned chow for his cat--Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) gets a visit from his buddy, Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton). They chat, play a little game with dollar bills--seems like Marlowe always loses to him--when Terry tells him he's finally left his wife, Sylvia, his battered hand evidence it was not an amicable parting. Then he asks Marlowe for a ride to the border, pronto. What are friends for?
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The Long Goodbye is sometimes called a "neo-noir", the kind of term meant as one of endearment, meaning that the movie recalls the fondly looked upon classics of the silver screen from yesteryear, though that is not an exclusive component. In the case of The Long Goodbye, the closest parallel would no doubt be The Big Sleep; both films are adapted from works by Raymond Chandler, featuring his iconic gumshoe as the main character. For those acquainted with The Big Sleep, the impression of Marlowe is one of not only a cunning detective, but one who looks as sharp as his wit; the Marlowe of The Long Goodbye frequently looks like he's been suffering some hard times himself. No, Marlowe still dresses in a suit, but he looks a little worn, a little tired; he drives a car a few decades behind the times--no doubt the antique is an homage to the noir classics of yesteryear, along with the gate attendant's impersonations at The Malibu Place. But, he also feels a lot more human; his conversations with Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt), who recruits him to locate her husband, the writer Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden), show a sympathetic side to him. More than that, Marlowe still embodies that great Bogart-esque feature of being able to steer the flow of a conversation, the situations he finds himself in, even if it doesn't always go the way he wants. He is flippant and sarcastic with the police and their gestapo-like tactics to link him to a murder he wasn't even aware of, one which sets the spiral spinning, dragging him down into the undertow of a conspiracy with webs spreading wide. Seeking Wade at a clinic his quarry often visits to "dry out" from his alcoholic binges, Marlowe ignores the obvious attempts at obfuscation by the staff and its weasel of an administrator, Dr. Verringer (Henry Gibson), and begins parading the grounds himself in search of the concealed writer. When he does discover the writer, mentally confused and highly agitated as a result of his unchecked addiction, Marlowe gets the information he needs by showing camaraderie with the man, even though he consistently mistakes his name, calling him "The Marlboro Man". And to what end Marlowe utilize all of these masks of his? It takes little effort for him to track down Wade for his wife; his game is to find out the real story about what happened to his good friend, Terry Lennox.
One of the unspoken secrets of friendship is that if you want to stay friends with someone, you get to know them only as much as you have to--any more than that and odds are you'll go out and find a better friend. Just a bit cynical, I know, but it's the kind of adage which fits snug in a noir world, "neo" or otherwise. It comes as a bit of a surprise for Marlowe to find that he's drawn the attention of a local crime boss, an unhinged, cruel little man named Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell). Augustine is convinced that Marlowe had something to do with Terry's disappearance; Terry was working for Augustine, transporting a third of a million dollars with him. Augustine makes it clear that it is now Marlowe's job to ante up, one way or another. Truthfully, Marlowe is already in the process of investigating these events, but there's no point in tipping his hand to the little gangster, even if he gets a little roughed up. Augustine's way of driving his point home is displayed with a kind a rare viciousness, capitalizing on Marlowe's own decency to motivate him. Something which is (was) unusual for film noir--and Chandler adaptations in the Hays Code-era--is the prevalence of domestic violence toward women in The Long Goodbye; although only seen in one graphic instance, many women in the story suffer violence at the hand of the men who are supposed to love or protect them, men who--for the period--are generally representative as powerful, "modern" men. Compare this with Marlowe, whose manner and dress are intentionally a bit anachronistic, who acts with a more "old-fashioned" code of conduct (i.e. not hitting women), and there is a sense that The Long Goodbye has a subtle condemnation for the so-called "modern lifestyle". Another anachronism of Marlowe's is his chain-smoking, something already out of fashion for the modern, health-obsessed denizens of California, even in the Seventies. None of these clever allusions would surprise me; clever wit and subtle satire have always been a hallmark of legendary filmmaker and director of The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman. Equally legendary composer John Williams provides the score for The Long Goodbye, and his contributions are unique in this movie. The music to the film is a bit unusual, because unlike many other movies with a selection of different songs and melodies, The Long Goodbye takes one song--written by Williams and Johnny Mercer--and rearranges it and retools it in varying ways, making for about as jazzy of a take on a musical score as one can get. At some points, it becomes somewhat comic when a new interpretation of the singular piece emerges, but even a little dark comedy is at home in The Long Goodbye--like a Doberman Pinscher carting an old man's cane in his mouth, a faithfulness no longer relevant. What makes detective stories like The Long Goodbye so entertaining is that scene to scene, we learn a new little nugget of plot which adds another piece to the puzzle; but even as we think the picture is taking the shape we expect, another piece is delivered, making us reevaluate our image--sometimes that piece comes in the form of a shocking conclusion.
Recommended for: Fans of detective stories--especially the classic "clever gumshoe" sort by Chandler and Hammett. Seeing the story supplanted into (at the time) modern L.A. makes for a novel reinterpretation on Marlowe and his place in a different kind of City of Angels. And I hope you like the song, because it's going to be stuck in your head.
One of the unspoken secrets of friendship is that if you want to stay friends with someone, you get to know them only as much as you have to--any more than that and odds are you'll go out and find a better friend. Just a bit cynical, I know, but it's the kind of adage which fits snug in a noir world, "neo" or otherwise. It comes as a bit of a surprise for Marlowe to find that he's drawn the attention of a local crime boss, an unhinged, cruel little man named Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell). Augustine is convinced that Marlowe had something to do with Terry's disappearance; Terry was working for Augustine, transporting a third of a million dollars with him. Augustine makes it clear that it is now Marlowe's job to ante up, one way or another. Truthfully, Marlowe is already in the process of investigating these events, but there's no point in tipping his hand to the little gangster, even if he gets a little roughed up. Augustine's way of driving his point home is displayed with a kind a rare viciousness, capitalizing on Marlowe's own decency to motivate him. Something which is (was) unusual for film noir--and Chandler adaptations in the Hays Code-era--is the prevalence of domestic violence toward women in The Long Goodbye; although only seen in one graphic instance, many women in the story suffer violence at the hand of the men who are supposed to love or protect them, men who--for the period--are generally representative as powerful, "modern" men. Compare this with Marlowe, whose manner and dress are intentionally a bit anachronistic, who acts with a more "old-fashioned" code of conduct (i.e. not hitting women), and there is a sense that The Long Goodbye has a subtle condemnation for the so-called "modern lifestyle". Another anachronism of Marlowe's is his chain-smoking, something already out of fashion for the modern, health-obsessed denizens of California, even in the Seventies. None of these clever allusions would surprise me; clever wit and subtle satire have always been a hallmark of legendary filmmaker and director of The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman. Equally legendary composer John Williams provides the score for The Long Goodbye, and his contributions are unique in this movie. The music to the film is a bit unusual, because unlike many other movies with a selection of different songs and melodies, The Long Goodbye takes one song--written by Williams and Johnny Mercer--and rearranges it and retools it in varying ways, making for about as jazzy of a take on a musical score as one can get. At some points, it becomes somewhat comic when a new interpretation of the singular piece emerges, but even a little dark comedy is at home in The Long Goodbye--like a Doberman Pinscher carting an old man's cane in his mouth, a faithfulness no longer relevant. What makes detective stories like The Long Goodbye so entertaining is that scene to scene, we learn a new little nugget of plot which adds another piece to the puzzle; but even as we think the picture is taking the shape we expect, another piece is delivered, making us reevaluate our image--sometimes that piece comes in the form of a shocking conclusion.
Recommended for: Fans of detective stories--especially the classic "clever gumshoe" sort by Chandler and Hammett. Seeing the story supplanted into (at the time) modern L.A. makes for a novel reinterpretation on Marlowe and his place in a different kind of City of Angels. And I hope you like the song, because it's going to be stuck in your head.