The Long Goodbye
With Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden.
US, 1973, 35mm, color, 112 min.
Print source: Park Circus
Echoing as much of Raymond Chandler’s novel as it does the author’s life, The Long Goodbye is perhaps Altman’s funniest valentine to Hollywood. While securing screenwriter Leigh Brackett, who co-wrote The Big Sleep (1946), which solidified Humphrey Bogart as Chandler’s hard-boiled 1940s detective, Altman made his Philip Marlowe a vulnerable, droll and mumbling Elliott Gould. From the blithely ingenious soundtrack to the casting of characters partially playing themselves, Altman wryly and improvisationally toys with the mythos of Hollywood as it intersects with the reality of Seventies Los Angeles. The film self-deprecatingly encapsulates the contradictions of the time by mixing the carefree and irreverent with uncomfortable confrontation and sudden violence. Sometimes off-frame or partly obstructed, the camera wanders as ambivalently as Marlowe does around a comic parade of deceptive characters and the elusive truth. The detective’s unpredictable path may encounter all of the essential elements of a classic noir, yet Altman’s translucent lens translates these into the disarming, detailed grain of a faded naturalism underscored by Marlowe’s irresolute refrain, “It’s okay with me.”
PRECEDED BY
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Speak Low
Directed by Robert Altman.
With Lili St. Cyr.
US, 1966, digital video, color, 4 min.
Copy source: UCLA
Speak Low finds Altman filming sophisticated stripper Lili St. Cyr in a brief bit of playful and naughty eroticism.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson
Vincent & Theo
Fool for Love
Prêt-à-porter
California Split
Thieves Like Us
A Perfect Couple
A Prairie Home Companion
O.C. and Stiggs
That Cold Day in the Park
Corn's-A-Poppin'
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
The Gingerbread Man
Dr. T and the Women
Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
