Raymond Chandler’s cynically idealistic hero, Philip Marlowe, has been played by everyone from Humphrey Bogart to James Garner–but no one gives him the kind of weirdly affect-less spin that Elliott Gould does in this terrific Robert Altman reimagining of Chandler’s penultimate novel. Altman recasts Marlowe as an early ’70s L.A. habitué, who gets involved in a couple of cases at once.
The most interesting involves a suicidal writer (Sterling Hayden in a larger-than-life performance) whom Marlowe is supposed to keep away from malevolent New-Ageish guru Henry Gibson. A variety of wonderfully odd characters pop up, played by everyone from model Nina Van Pallandt to director Mark Rydell to ex-baseballer Jim Bouton. And yes, that is Arnold Schwarzenegger (in only his second movie) popping up as (what else?) a muscleman. Listen for the title song: It shows up in the strangest places.
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Robert Altman (Short Cuts, Gosford Park) directs Elliott Gould (Friends, Ocean’s Eleven) as the chain-smoking, wisecracking private eye Philip Marlowe who drives a buddy from LA to the Tijuana border and returns home to an apartment full of cops who arrest him for abetting the murder of his friend’s wife. After Marlowe’s release, following the reported suicide in Mexico of his friend, a beautiful woman hires him to locate her alcoholic and mercurial husband.
See the lyrics for The Long Goodbye under the video:
There’s a long goodbye
And it happens everyday
When some passerby
Invites your eye
To come her way
Even as she smiles
A quick hello
You’ve let her go
You’ve let the moment fly
Too late you’d turn your head
You’d know you’ve said
The long goodbye
Can you recognise the pain
On some other street
Two people meet
As in a dream
Running for a plane
Through the rain
If the heart is quicker than the eye
They could be lovers
Until they die
It’s too late to try
When a missed hello
Becomes the long goodbye
Music composed by John Williams for The Long Goodbye (1973), performed here by Dave Grusin.
Janus Aureus 