- This shouldn't need to be said, but Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels have a sense of humor. They're funny! Marlowe is often explicitly wry or sardonic, but just as often the humor stems from the patently absurd situations in which the detective finds himself. Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep understood this and Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet captured it brilliantly, but other adaptations, homages, and satires often miss that point. Which brings us to the most famous countercultural version of Marlowe in Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye.
- The opening sequence of The Long Goodbye is an undeniably brilliant introduction to our stumbling, mumbling, chain-smoking hero (Elliott Gould), who heads out grocery shopping in the middle of the night for cat food. It is probably impossible not to laugh when you realize that Marlowe's master plan is to repackage the off-brand cat food (they were out of the good stuff) to fool his finicky feline, who immediately sees through the ruse. Marlowe also kindly buys some brownie mix for his libertine neighbors, who, like most of the characters in this film, come from a specific early 70's version of California that never existed. And then Marlowe's old pal Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) drops by asking for a late-night ride to Tijuana.
- Fast-forward a day and the cops are dragging Marlowe downtown for answering their questions like a goofy wiseass. It turns out Lennox's wife was found murdered, followed soon after by Lennox's apparent suicide in Mexico. Marlowe gets his name in the paper for refusing to help the police, which is why Eileen Wade (Nina van Pallandt) hires him to find her missing husband, Roger (Sterling Hayden). With his booming voice, towering physique, and sea captain's beard, it is impossible to imagine anybody having any trouble locating Roger, which is why it is strange that Dr. Verringer (Henry Gibson) denies that Roger is staying at his private clinic. But Marlowe comes to the rescue and all of this eventually ties in with both the Lennox murder and a repellent gangster named Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell). Describing the details would be missing the point.
- So what, then, is the point of The Long Goodbye? Well, I'm not really sure, and I think that's the problem. It's an exaggerated and strange adaptation that paradoxically seems to love and hate the source material. There's a gratuitous eruption of violence that Chandler never would have allowed and a scene in which a bunch of goons (including an uncredited Arnold Schwarzenegger!) strip down to their underwear for no reason. Many of the supporting characters are repellent, which can be tough to stomach without the assistance of Chandler's charming prose. My feelings about the movie mirror how it uses its theme song (composed by John Williams), which gets echoed by every musician, whistler, and harmonica player in the movie: An entertaining gimmick at first, but eventually it's just obnoxious.
- Also starring Jack Riley, Ken Sansom, and...David Carradine?
