Robert Altman’s odd, modern and
much misunderstood The Long Goodbye has been getting a lot of attention
lately, presumably because of a re-release on DVD and Blu-ray, which got me
wondering, “Is it not only the best adaptation of a Raymond Chandler novel, but
one of the greatest films ever made?”
Anyone familiar with the film
will know that the typically convoluted Chandleresque plotting – already toned
down in a book that is much more melancholy and bleak than usual – will get
little attention in Altman’s film. Suffice it to say that Philip Marlowe
(Elliot Gould) is engaged by his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) to drive him
to Mexico. Marlowe does this and is immediately arrested for aiding and
abetting a murder, as it seems Terry has murdered his wife. Marlowe is
committed to clearing Lennox’s name and, by extension, his own, which leads him
into contact with Roger and Eileen Wades (Nina van Pallandt and Sterling
Hayden), neighbours of the Lennoxs’, and a crazed gangster Marty Augustine
(Mark Rydell) who thinks Marlowe owes him money.
The Long Goodbye was not a
success on its first release, with many Chandler fans apparently outraged by
what they saw as Altman’s contempt for the genre and for Chandler’s character
and stories. Many complained that Gould portrayed Marlowe as a dimwit, a
know-nothing chancer who blunders his way through the case before it gets
wrapped up for him. However, this is not entirely fair, since the source novel
– one of Chandler’s last completed Marlowe novels – portrays a Marlowe who is
older, sadder and who takes longer than normal to solve a simpler case (it is
by far the longest Marlowe novel). Indeed, Altman’s film is much more faithful
than most other Chandler adaptations, if not in plot particularly then at least
in terms of tone. The novel of ‘The Big Sleep’, for instance, is not nearly as
happy go lucky as Howard Hawks’ celebrated film.
As a brief side note, the novel
‘The Long Goodbye’ might just be Chandler’s best too. If ‘The Big Sleep’
represents a stylistic perfection, the epitome of the hard-boiled crime story
or at least Chandler’s take on it, then ‘The Long Goodbye’ represents a bold
and fascinating experimentalism. ‘The Long Goodbye’ is long and wandering and
far from flawless, but it does suggest a master of the form trying to innovate,
trying out new themes and styles, making ‘The Long Goodbye’ a fascinating blend
of risks that fail and risks that pay off. Whether stylistic perfection or
stylistic experimentation is ultimately preferable ought to be the subject of
another article, but, as far as ‘The Long Goodbye’ goes, who better to adapt it
than the master of uneven, purposefully slapdash and experimental cinema,
Robert Altman.
Altman’s film is a crime film –
of course it is, and it is full of character and confrontations and incidents.
However, these scenes are injected with a nervous energy and an unpredictable
reality and they often don’t make a whole lot of sense, reflecting reality,
which hardly follows a carefully planned narrative line. By bringing melancholy
and disillusionment to his novel, Chandler was trying to bring more realism to
his stories than he had before. Altman takes this melancholy and adds a vague,
loose and inconclusive narrative, imbuing The Long Goodbye with much
more realism than would be expected from a Marlowe story. Think of the opening
credits sequence, which is not the beginning of a crime film at all, wherein
Marlowe bums around his flat trying to feed his cat (clearly put out by it but
it is obviously the only constant friend he’s got so he lets it bother him). He
goes out to the store to buy some cat food and Altman intercuts between Marlowe
driving through LA at night and Lennox driving around. Neither seem to know
particularly what they are doing and neither seems to be going anywhere in
particular. Coupled with an incredibly adaptable John Williams score, it
manages to be extremely sad.
This opening represents perfectly
that Marlowe is not a bungler, that he is a lonely man cast adrift in an
unwelcoming world that is as meaningless as it is corrupt. Marlowe’s defence
mechanism for all of this is the catchphrase “It’s alright with me”, which he
says whenever something throws him or confuses him. This stoicism is rarely
lifted, but every now and then something truly awful happens that forces
Marlowe to try. His other defence mechanism is the wit that Chandler’s Marlowe
had. Chandler’s Marlowe always knew how to get out of a tight scrap and he
always had a good one-liner for any situation. Altman’s Marlowe tries to be
witty but is often ignored or interrupted. Too often we see Marlowe trapped and
unable to escape and all that is left for him to do is go nuts. Twice in the
film (at least) he is so angry that he is almost speechless. Following his stay
in prison and immediately following Roger Wade’s suicide – here in particular –
he can barely string sentences together.
In keeping with his old-fashioned
stoicism and sense of humour, the only guy that Marlowe seems to immediately
understand is the Wade’s odd gatekeeper (Ken Sansom) who only allows people
through if they can name the golden age Hollywood star that he is imitating.
Marlowe’s other friend, Lennox, is the only other character able to play along
with this gatekeeper. Equally old-fashioned, Marlowe has a sense of morality, one
that is ultimately a danger to him as he is susceptible to the plots and tricks
of the people that he likes. The reason he cannot see the truth about Terry
Lennox and Eileen Wade despite so much evidence is, ultimately, because he
trusts them. He believes in them, just like he believes in morals and, as
Altman makes clear, in 1970s LA morals are almost a character flaw.
The only characters who seem to
have any control are those who have left any kind of morality behind –
Augustine smashes a Coke bottle on his girlfriend’s face (Jo Ann Brody) despite
being in love with her to make a point and Dr. Verringer (Henry Gibson) is
almost supernatural in his ability to get people to do what he wants. Verringer
slaps a wild and angry Roger Wade in the face and somehow calms him down. Both
Augustine and Verringer’s victims wander through the rest of the film like
ghosts, the facial violence seemingly removing their last vestige of humanity.
In other words, they give up trying to take something good out of the world. Like
all of Verringer’s patients in his clinic, they are no longer there. Terry
Lennox becomes immoral, which is why Altman focuses on him during that
melancholic opening. Driving away from home, where his wife lies dead (beaten
to death – one cop tells Marlowe to look at what Terry did to her face), shaky
and frightened, Terry symbolically puts on his driving gloves to cover up the
scars on his fists and, with that, covering up his humanity.
Starting and ending with the tune
‘Hooray for Hollywood’ by Johnnie Davis (the only music that isn’t a variation
on William’s score), The Long Goodbye does not represent Altman’s
contempt for a genre. It merely recognises that Hollywood is an escape, an
unreality, and one that may be a danger if used as a way of life. Hence,
Marlowe’s wit fails and his naiveté (read his faith in other people) puts him
through all manner of unpleasantness. Indeed, Minnie’s exasperation with
Hollywood (“They set you up to believe in everything”) in Cassavetes’ Minnie
and Moskowitz could be Marlowe’s own.
However, this is turned on its
head in a surprise ending in which Marlowe guns down Terry in Mexico and
dancing off into the sunset – in an ending that quotes The Third Man.
Terry has been declared legally dead and so one believes that Marlowe is safe
from prosecution. Not only that but despite everything cruel and wrong about
the world, Marlowe ultimately gives the villain his comeuppance and is safe
from the law by a contrivance worthy of Hollywood. Hollywood saves the day and
everything Marlowe was standing by is oddly reaffirmed, the very thing that
some many supposed Altman to be contemptuous of is celebrated. In other words,
hooray for Hollywood. Or, to quote:
Hooray for Hollywood
That screwy, ballyhooey Hollywood
Where any office boy or young mechanic
Can be a panic, with just a goodlooking pan
Where any barmaid can be a star maid
If she dances with or without a fan
Hooray for Hollywood
Where you're terrific, if you're even good
Where anyone at all from TV's Lassie
To Monroe's chassis is equally understood
Go out and try your luck, you might be Donald Duck
Hooray for Hollywood
All of this and I haven’t even
mentioned Altman’s directing, his use of non-professional actors, his use of
improvisation, his sound mixing and editing. The Long Goodbye is great
for all of the reasons above, but it is the Robert Altman touches that make it
endlessly rewatchable and, for me, one of the greatest films ever made. In the
book, the alcoholic Roger Wade was Chandler’s self-portrait, one of the experiments
that paid dividends since it gave the book’s melancholia a personal touch.
Sterling Hayden was an alcoholic and was apparently wracked by guilt for naming
names before HUAC in the 1950s. In the film, Altman allows Hayden to give full
vent to his own demons, allowing for an incredible performance full of pain and
truth as well as a sense of humour. Altman keeps the camera distant. All the
actors are miked up and the camera gets close by zooms alone and the sound is
mixed (brilliantly) later. As a result, the actors had total freedom to walk
and talk. Hayden inhabits his house, smashing around the set and talking
gibberish without a concern for blocking and the camera and the sound, making
it all feel so spontaneous and out of control and real. Like Cassavetes, Altman
manages to capture the chaos and unpredictability of everyday real life, making
his films full of incident and observation. The improvisation only adds more
insight as each actor brings more perspective to their characters than a single
writer can. In other words, the film is alive.
Hopefully, I have been successful
in my bid to convince that this film deserves wide acclaim and recognition. I
didn’t initially like The Long Goodbye, I didn’t get it, and it wasn’t
until I saw it for the fourth time in about a year that I realized why I was so
constantly drawn to it. For me, it is a masterpiece, a classic 1970s film of
risk and invention, sadness and humour and one of Altman’s greatest
achievements.*
*The others for the record, are MASH, California
Split, Nashville, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s
History Lesson and A Wedding.
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