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Private investigator Philip Marlowe is approached by a friend, Terry Lennox, who is in a bit of a jam. Marlowe helps him get to Mexico but the next day his friend's wife turns up dead. The police hold Marlowe but then release him once Terry Lennox is found dead in Mexico - suicide. To the cops it is an open-and-shut case of murder-suicide but Marlowe doesn't believe that to be the case. Marlowe then is hired by the wife of wealthy author Roger Wade to find her husband. The Wades were neighbours of the Lennoxes. A powerful mob boss also leans on him to find the large sum of money Terry Lennox was transporting for him. Could all these events be connected?

Robert Altman directs a movie based on a Raymond Chandler novel, and it's a mixed bag.

Starts off very well with some humorous scenes and dialogue and a fair amount of intrigue. The middle-to-end sections lack focus, however, and, while it is never dull, the movie feels like it is drifting to a lacklustre conclusion. The intrigue just seems to get sucked out of the movie in that segment. In addition, the theme song gets played in just about every situation and in various forms - it gets very irritating, very quickly.

Ends well though, with a good twist and a powerful conclusion.

A new take on Philip Marlowe from Elliott Gould - he is hardly Humphrey Bogart and he's not trying to be. Altman's Philip Marlowe is the dishevelled, anti-social chain-smoking anti-hero rather than the suave, confident hero that Bogart portrayed. For the most part, it works, though at times I wished for the coolness and wise-cracks of Bogie.

Supporting cast are fine. Sterling Hayden is great as the larger-than-life, Ernest Hemingway/John Huston-esque Roger Wade.

Not the Philip Marlowe of the Bogart movies, but it'll do.

I like the hard-to-solve mystery we get here. Actually, they don't even come close to giving us enough clues to solve it, hence the difficulty. But in that we feel we're up against it like the protagonist, detective Phil Marlowe, played by Elliot Gould.

Times have really changed for Marlowe since 1946, when he was played by Humphrey Bogart. Then he was cool, implacable, wore a fedora a lot, and wound up with babe Lauren Bacall. That was the only strain of the plot viewers could follow. There were some dead bodies, smoking guns, and tough questions from cops along the way.

In this movie it's 1973, and Marlowe still think he's cool but that opinion is not so widespread this time - he's being played for a sucker by at least half the cast, including a longtime friend, and his own cat. He unravels the mystery mostly out of a lack of having anything better to do, which he clearly stood in need of.

Director Robert Altman follows his own ideas about how to communicate visually. Like when he changes scene to a hospital, he doesn't do any kind of establishing long shot, he shows a closeup of a light over a patient's bed. His montages create a kind of equivalent of our human experience, where we use our minds to focus on detail. He usually winds up with scenes that feel like we're watching something actually happen. But he does know how to use visuals for dramatic power when he wants, as the ending makes clear.

Some of the performances he gets from actors are amazing, like Mark Rydell as psychotically dangerous gangster Marty Augustine. The way he works himself into a rage with his rants changes gears from funny to frightening at high speed, and I can't believe it didn't influence Joe Pesci's performance in "Goodfellas."

Not everything works here, like Gould smearing fingerprint ink on his face then breaking into Al Jolson at police headquarters, but on the whole a fairly engrossing take on detective mysteries.

The very embodiment of '70s Hollywood genre revisionism, Robert Altman's film of The Long Goodbye stands as one of his most accessible, wittily misanthropic films, and probably the finest performance of Elliot Gould's career to date.

A warning for Raymond Chandler purists: you probably won't like this film. Altman and screenwriter Leigh Brackett had quite a task in adapting Chandler's second-last novel to the screen, for in it the 'knight errant' Phillip Marlowe comes over more like a prudish sap. Altman and Brackett have streamlined the narrative, removed peripheral characters, and – crucially – transformed Marlowe into a murkier, more comically ambiguous protagonist.

In Altman's and Gould's hands, Marlowe is laconically relaxed, murmuring, alternately amused and annoyed at the world. Like Chandler's hero, he is an outsider, a spectator, everywhere he goes. Unlike the literary Marlowe, Gould's character seems washed up on the shores of an unfamiliar land, his nobility as crumpled and stale as his suit.

Along for the ride are the archetypal Chandler villains and victims: self-hating celebrities, young wives trapped in loveless marriages, crooked doctors, low-rent psychopathic gangsters, bored cops, flunkies lost out of time. Typically, the milieux Marlowe moves in range from the affluence of the Malibu Colony to the cells of the County Jail. Altman, however, wishes to make a film in and about 1973; the film is shot through with the psychic reverberations of the end of hippiedom and the remoteness of the 'Me Generation'.

Another Altman touch is his openly expressed contempt for Hollywood and its conventions. As if to acknowledge the artificiality of a private detective story in the midst of 1970s Los Angeles, the film is suffused with jokey references to cinema. Bookended with 'Hooray for Hollywood', the film shows gatekeepers impersonating movie stars, characters changing their names for added class, hoods enacting movie clichés simply because that's where they learnt to behave. Even Marlowe himself refers to the artifice when talking to the cops: 'Is this where I'm supposed to say 'What's all this about?' and he says 'Shut up, I ask the questions' ?'

As for the supporting cast, Sterling Hayden shines out as the beleaguered novelist Roger Wade. There is more than a touch of Hemingway in Hayden's bluff, blustering, vulnerable old hack. Baseball champ and sportscaster Jim Bouton is casually mysterious as Marlowe's friend Terry Lennox, Laugh-In alumnus Henry Gibson is suitably greasy as Dr Verringer, actor/director Mark Rydell (best known for 'On Golden Pond') is convincingly chilling as gangster Marty Augustine, and Nina van Pallandt lends a dignified, defiant pathos to her role as Eileen Wade.

Special note must be made of Vilmos Zsigmond's tremendous photography, employing his early 'flashing' style of exposure to lend Los Angeles a suitably sultry, bleached-out aura. Also deserving attention is John Williams' ingeniously minimalist score. Comprised solely of pseudo-source music, the score is a myriad of variations on a single song, appearing here as supermarket muzak, there as a party singalong, elsewhere as a late night radio tune.

The film's controversial ending is utterly antithetical to Chandler's vision. The message from Altman, however, is loud and clear: Chandler's world no longer exists – if indeed it ever did.

I admit, when I first viewed "The Long Goodbye", in 1973, I didn't like the film; the signature Altman touches (rambling storyline, cartoonish characters, dialog that fades in and out) seemed ill-suited to a hard-boiled detective movie, and Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe? No WAY! Bogie had been perfect, Dick Powell, nearly as good, but "M.A.S.H.'s" 'Trapper John'? Too ethnic, too 'hip', too 'Altman'! Well, seeing it again, nearly 34 years later, I now realize I was totally wrong! The film is brilliant, a carefully-crafted color Noir, with Gould truly remarkable as a man of morals in a period (the 1970s) lacking morality. Perhaps it isn't Raymond Chandler, but I don't think he'd have minded Altman's 'spin', at all! In the first sequence of the film, Marlowe's cat wakes him to be fed; out of cat food, the detective drives to an all-night grocery, only to discover the cat's favorite brand is out of stock, so he attempts to fool the cat, emptying another brand into an empty can of 'her' food. The cat isn't fooled by the deception, however, and runs away, for good...

A simple scene, one I thought was simply Altman quirkiness, in '73...but, in fact, it neatly foreshadows the major theme of the film: betrayal by a friend, and the price. As events unfold, Marlowe would uncover treachery, a multitude of lies, and self-serving, amoral characters attempting to 'fool' him...with his resolution decisive, abrupt, and totally unexpected! The casting is first-rate. Elliott Gould, Altman's only choice as Marlowe, actually works extremely well, BECAUSE he is against 'type'. Mumbling, bemused, a cigarette eternally between his lips, he gives the detective a blue-collar integrity that plays beautifully off the snobbish Malibu 'suspects'. And what an array of characters they are! From a grandiosely 'over-the-top' alcoholic writer (Sterling Hayden, in a role intended for Dan Blocker, who passed away, before filming began), to his sophisticated, long-suffering wife (Nina Van Pallandt), to a thuggish Jewish gangster attempting to be genteel (Mark Rydell), to a smug health guru (Henry Gibson), to Marlowe's cocky childhood buddy (Jim Bouton)...everyone has an agenda, and the detective must plow through all the deception, to uncover the truth.

There are a couple of notable cameos; Arnold Schwarzenegger, in only his second film, displays his massive physique, as a silent, mustached henchman; and David Carradine plays a philosophical cell mate, after Marlowe 'cracks wise' to the cops.

The film was a failure when released; Altman blamed poor marketing, with the studio promoting it as a 'traditional' detective flick, and audiences (including me) expecting a Bogart-like Marlowe. Time has, however, allowed the movie to succeed on it's own merits, and it is, today, considered a classic.

So please give the film a second look...You may discover a new favorite, in an old film!

It's true. You can't have mixed feelings about The Long Good-bye; you'll either love it or hate it. I started the movie with what I pretended was an open mind, but a secret hope that I'd be fully justified in hating it. In my defense, The Maltese Falcon is my favorite movie and Bogie is my favorite actor. Noir is my favorite film genre and I love Howard Hawk's The Big Sleep wihich had Bogart as the definitive Marlowe.

Altman's take on Chandler's other book with private eye Marlowe, The Long Good-bye, updates the action to the 1970's. He introduces a very 70's theme song and finds as different an actor as he can from Bogart for the role of Marlowe. From the opening frame, Elliot Gould plays Marlowe like a push-over. He's a man who constantly mutters to himself, suffers nervous tics, can't even fool his cat, is afraid of dog's and seems to be the only man not attracted to his sexy hippie neighbors despite their friendliness towards him and obvious promiscuousness.

However, Gould really creates a unique persona with the way he walks, talks, wise-cracks and operates. He becomes a believable person - which is why the uncharacteristic ending is so impacting. The photography, especially the night scenes, are beautifully filmed. The theme music plays everywhere - a Mexican funeral, a doorbell, a car radio etc and with different singers. There are other layers of flesh added to the telling that really work - like the compound security guards impressions of James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, Cary Grant and best of all Walter Brennan aka Stumpy from Rio Bravo.

This movie worked great for me and the plot, intricate though it was, was understandable. I will not compare this Marlowe to Bogart's, but do find it admirable that Altman just stuck to the goal of making a good movie without trying to ape or make obvious references to the noir genre.

Easily one of Altman's best films and an early precursor to other films later in the decade by the director. The Long Goodbye is a fine transition in style to Altmans later films like "Nashville" and "A Wedding" Elliot Gould does an outstanding job portraying the outre detective Phillip Marlowe, using his mumbling, bumbling, smart ass speaking style, as a technique to keep the film under the illusion that everything is in motion, like the ocean waves in the film, Marlowe speaks in a sort of beatnik type "Daddy-O" style combined with a smooth talking private eye, and the result works perfectly. The film works like it is timed by a metronome, it rolls along, seamlessly in a way that only Altman can achieve, and like the rhythm of the waves and Marlowe's speech, the camera is constantly in motion as well. The roving camera does an excellent job of allowing the viewer to feel as though they are witnessing more action than actually exists on screen.

Wade (Sterling Hayden) is a fantastic Hemingway-esque writer in the film. Hayden's size and booming voice, in conjunction with his alcoholism and potential brutality, lend an aroma of unpredictableness to his character. Wade's beautiful wife, who has a mysterious bruise on her face, is like a timid, loyal animal, subjected to the whims of her over bearing master. Henry Gibson, who plays Wade's doctor, is excellent as a sort of despotic mouse, who frightens an elephant into conforming to his will, this irony is one of the films intriguing, bizarre twists.

This film works well as a character study, and is one of the best films of the seventies. A must see for every student of film. 9/10

Elliott Gould offers up one of his most amusing performances as Raymond Chandlers' private eye character Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is visited in the wee hours of the morning by his friend Terry Lennox (baseball player Jim Bouton). He does his friend a favour by driving him all the way to Tijuana. Some time after that, he learns that, in fact, Terry's wife Sylvia is dead, presumably killed by Terry, who has also offed himself. Then he is hired for a supposedly simple case: find Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden), a boozy writer, for his wife Eileen (Nina van Pallandt). In the time-honoured tradition of detective fiction, Marlowe will discover that the separate stories turn out to be connected.

Filmmaker Robert Altmans' take on the whole Neo-Noir genre does take some getting used to. It's a lot more irreverent, and goofy, than some people will expect. Devotees of Chandler and classic film noir will likely be dismayed. Scripted by the legendary Leigh Brackett, the dialogue does flow from the mouths of the cast with real ease, and it is reasonably entertaining to watch as this thing develops. After a while, however, even a viewer such as this one can see where the story is headed.

Goulds' version of Marlowe is a real change of pace. He's a quirky, hip, unflappable wise-ass who's willing to head to an all-night supermarket to obtain the only brand of cat food that his pet will eat. And he's just one memorable character in this interesting stew of a film. Hayden plays his washed-up writer for everything that it's worth. Film director Mark Rydell ("The Rose") is clearly relishing his meaty acting role as a brutal Jewish gangster. Henry Gibson ("The Blues Brothers") is an effective weasel as a doctor who expects to be PAID for his services. Danish actress Van Pallandt is alluring as the femme fatale of the piece. And there are a couple of very familiar faces in small roles: Jack Riley ('The Bob Newhart Show'), Rutanya Alda ("Mommie Dearest"), David Carradine as a chatty convict, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger as one of Rydells' goons.

Set in a sunny but rather seedy California of the 70s (complete with spacey hippie neighbours for Marlowe), this is an entertainingly convoluted tale, and a rather slowly paced one, but it always remains...interesting. It's definitely an unusual spin on the typical noir film.

Seven out of 10.

With The Long Goodbye Elliot Gould joins the ranks of distinguished players who have been Raymond Chandler's famous private detective. He might not be the tough guy as Bogart, Mitchum, and Powell were, but he's deadly. Never more so than in the very end of this film.

As in many classic Marlowe stories separate cases that Marlowe is hired for are really connected. In The Long Goodbye, Gould does a favor for friend Jim Bouton by driving him to the airport. Later on Bouton's wife is found murdered and it is reported that Bouton committed suicide in Mexico.

Gould is also hired by Nina Van Pallandt to find her dissolute writer husband Sterling Hayden. And gangster Mark Rydell wants Gould to locate some missing money of his. All that and Gould's cat goes missing.

Contemporary Los Angeles is photographed nicely in The Long Goodbye. Of the cast my favorite is Sterling Hayden who drinks a lot and has lost his muse for writing. He's also lost a bit else as well.

Raymond Chandler fans should be pleased.

That most expert of genre benders -- Robert Altman -- takes aim at the noir detective film in this delightfully creative and witty adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel.

Altman -- not to mention Elliott Gould, who delivers a wonderfully whacked-out performance as Chandler staple Philip Marlowe -- gives us a hero who's right at home in the drifter, "everything goes" environment of 1970s L.A. His mumbled refrain throughout the film is "It's o.k. with me," a refrain that sees him through all manner of confrontations, some of them life threatening. The plot is one of those convoluted puzzles for which films noir are known, having something to do with Marlowe's close friend, Terry Lennox, turning up dead in Mexico after supposedly murdering his wife. Marlowe, unable to believe that his friend would be capable of such an act, can't let the case drop even though the police want him to. And of course, in true noir fashion, he's hired for a separate case that at first seems to have nothing to do with the other but eventually turns out to be connected, involving the wife (Nina van Pallandt) of a suicidal novelist (Sterling Hayden, giving a frightening and intense performance).

But, also true to film noir (and true as well of most Altman films), none of this plot really matters as much as the movie's tone, so artist and genre find themselves perfectly matched. Over the course of the film, we realize that Marlowe is the only honest person in this crooked version of contemporary L.A., and he begins to seem like more of a relic from a past decade, a shuffling gumshoe that might be at home in a Warners crime film from the 40s, but who is woefully under equipped to handle the dirty dealings of the present. That is until a shocking and cold-blooded finale, in which Marlowe proves himself to be a bit more resourceful than we had given him credit for.

There's a hip quality to "The Long Goodbye" -- it's a sustained joke of a film that Altman pulls off beautifully. Our introduction to Marlowe finds him going off in the middle of the night in search of his cat's favorite brand of pet food, and then trying to trick the cat into eating a brand it's not used to. This endears us to him, and we stay endeared to him for the rest of the film, thanks largely to the way Gould plays him. The film looks great too; Altman's frequent collaborator on his early 70s pictures, Vilmos Zsigmond, does cinematography honors. And John Williams composed a great theme song, that plays in numerous variations throughout the film and contributes a running gag to the proceedings, popping up at one point as the funeral dirge being played by a Mexican band and at another as the tinkling tune of a doorbell.

I've liked "The Long Goodbye" more and more every time I've seen it, and have quickly come to the conclusion that it's one of Altman's best.

Grade: A

I am familiar with the Raymond Chandler type of detective even though I have not read this particular book. I was curious to see how Elliott Gould would fit in to the preconceptions I had of Phillip Marlowe.

I wasn't impressed with his style. He didn't seem hard enough. The constant chain-smoking seemed contrived. He seemed lackadaisical.

Then I looked at the director - Robert Altman, the Hollywood-hating director that went against type. Everything made sense. The constant Hollywood references in the movie, and the private eye that hung around with bare-breasted hippies still stuck in the Summer of Love.

Done in between Mash and Nashville, it is particularly Altman. It is a caricature of Marlowe, and, in that sense, Gould fits perfectly. I am not happy with the film, but I understand.

The cinematography was great and the sound tract was superb. Sterling Hayden (Dr. Strangelove) was great as the Hemingwayesque writer, and Nina Van Pallandt (Clifford Irving's mistress for you literary types) was also very good as his wife.

Good Altman, but not a good Marlowe. See Bogey in The Big Sleep for the best example of how that should be done.

I really don't understand why this film gets such high ratings. It doesn't work either as an adaptation of a Chandler novel or on its own merits.

I'm a big Chandler fan. I understand that adapting a book to film means making concessions, but I don't think there is a single line of dialogue from the book in this film. If you like Chandler then you know it's his dialog that makes him such an outstanding writer and more than just a pulp-fiction hack.

I can also understand changing the plot, but this movie removes so much of the original and changes not only the storyline, but the characters and motivations that it becomes incoherent. I mean why make Mexican gangsters in the book into Jewish ones in the film? It takes away from the reasoning of Lennox's flight to Mexico. There is never any real understanding of why or how Lennox and Marlowe met or became friends. There are a whole group of characters left out which gave meaning to story. Without any understanding of the characters, the plot doesn't make sense, and the changes take away from the understanding and make the motivations weak.

Although the story was "updated" to the 1970's, the look and feel is more of an early 1960's film. It wasn't avant-garde, but already outdated when it came out.

Some people like the soundtrack, but I find the one song, in it's numerous variations very insipid. Hearing each version over and over again only point out how awful a song it is. It comes off as a cheap trick.

So even on its own terms this movie is very weak and frustrating and as Chandler film it will make aficionados cringe.

Much like the 30's jazz music that opens the movie, The Long Goodbye appears on the surface to take its cue from classic film noir. No surprise here, it is based after all on the Raymond Chandler novel by the same name, Chandler as iconic a figure in the noir realm as you're likely to get and responsible for some of the most distinctly classic moments of the genre (Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, also Strangers on a Train for Hitchcock). But instead of rehashing styles and themes from a bygone era of film-making, Altman instead takes Chandler's film noir of wandering, and hangs on it his own unique take.

Elliot Gould is Phillip Marlowe. Scruffy, sardonic and alienated private dick with a smart mouth and a cigarette eternally glued to his lips. Altman's twist? He's cool but not the suave kind that would impress dames in the 40's, the Bogart kind. He seems constantly out of place, a bit phased, doomed to observe and comment in his witty repartee on what's going on around him or just let the chips fall where they may. And they do.

Chandler's story is one of his very best. All the staples of noir are present, simultaneously fulfilling the promise of a Phillip Marlowe film and in the same time preparing the ground for Altman's take on it; murder, missing money, unhappy marriages, a private eye hired to investigate. The works. Sprawling and convoluted like the best of noirs usually are. The dialogue crackling with inventiveness, shedding tough guy lingo for a sense of playfulness, rolling in and out of the picture in a stream-of-consciousness way.

Some of the twists and characters seem to carry a sense of seething malice, a fleeting glimpse on the seamy underbelly of the Great American Beast, the scars and ugliness of Hollywood showing behind a faded facade of glamour, an escalating creepiness factor that recalls the later works of David Lynch, predating him by a good number of years as it does. The mousey Dr. Verringe and the whole clinic subplot reminded me of Lost Highway for example.

What really elevates The Long Goodbye in another level is Altman's direction and he has Vilmos Zsigmond with him. This is only my second Altman picture (after McCabe and Mrs. Miller) but 2 hours in his presence were enough to leave an indelible sense that I'm watching the work of a master on top of his craft. Altman's camera is always on the move, slowly panning and floating in and out of the frame, picking up details, guiding the eye but never getting in the middle of the story or screaming for attention. The whole thing has a natural, subdued feel to it, what with the unobtrusive lighting and bleached-out, hazy look; no glitz or glamour here. Only the faded, long-gone impression of it. This is a world we are enmeshed in that surrounds from all sides with hazy reflection.

The Long Goodbye is both a fantastic and somewhat hidden gem of 70's crime cinema and also one of the missing links in the evolution of noir, all the way from Sunset Blvd. to Mullholland Drive. You must visit at some point.

I can say, without feeling too stupid, that is my favourite film of all time.

It has it all, firstly an incredibly brave screenplay that brought Raymond Chandler forward a generation after Bogart's best attempts to turn the great author into an insomnia remedy.

The casting of Elliot Gould as Marlowe is a stroke of genius - this Marlowe is undoubtedly very cool, but his 'coolness' comes from his idiosyncrasies, nerdy quirks and inability to fit into defined social circles. Sterling Hayden's performance, for me out-does his work on Dr Strangelove and can be added to Jack Nicholson in The Shining, Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy and Brando in The Godfather as one of the finest examples of character acting you will ever come across. His 'Hemingwayesque' alcoholic rages are violent, visceral and disturbing and yet he contains a brittle fragility that draws you to his performance.

The shining light though is Altman. Not only did he get the best career performances out of his finely assembled ensemble (did Gould, Hayden or Van Pallant ever do better?), but also produced one of the best shot films of all time. Only bettered in this era by Coppola's The Conversation (not a bad film to come second to).

On top of all this is an overwhelming sense of the auteur, the soundtrack, camera work and acting performances all combine to create a synthesis of near perfect cinema.

Turn your computer off, run out of the house and rent/steal or buy this film. Watch it, you won't be disappointed.

Detective Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.

At first I was a bit turned off by the theme song, especially the thought that I was going to hear it a dozen times. But only the opening had a version I disliked and it grew on me from there.

Oddly, the film at first received negative critical feedback. Jay Cocks wrote, "Altman's lazy, haphazard putdown is without affection or understanding, a nose-thumb not only at the idea of Philip Marlowe but at the genre that his tough-guy-soft-heart character epitomized. It is a curious spectacle to see Altman mocking a level of achievement to which, at his best, he could only aspire".

This turned around when Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert came to its defense... and I am not really sure where Cocks was coming from. Sure, I am looking at the film forty years later (2013), but to me it comes across as something of a masterpiece. Some think Altman's best work is "Nashville", but I will take this one any day.

When I first saw the film it was after I've read Chandler's book and I was disappointed, because it was not the same Marlowe and not the same story. Now, after seeing this film many times I can say without hesitation that this is a masterpiece an Altman is a master of his craft.I think, that if it was made according to the book, it would be long forgotten.

The film is all about masks, misleading and misinterpretation.These are the bases of P.I. s' movies, and as Marlowe says all over the film "That's alright with me", but when it gets to Marlow's inner circle and ruins its basic beliefs its not "alright" anymore.

The cynical mask Marlowe wore in the relatively "naive" 40', so he could cope with the harsh reality then, isnt enough for the "sober" 70',and he had to change it to an indifferent clown mask. He think he could get away with this mask, but the treacherous reality gets to him at last. Eliot Gould is terrific in this role

Unlike many reviewers, I think the real Chandler's Marlow without the masks is revealed in the finale scene with Terry.

Nina Van Planndat who played Eileen Wade was known as the misstress of a well-known hoaxer at the time, and that contributed to her enigmatic role.She plays the fragile beaten woman (The blond femme fatale). Sterling Hyden is great as full of rage and bad manners Roger Wade.These impressions are of course all masks, but Marlowe fails to interpret them right, until its too late. The only one who doesn't wear mask is augustine (Mark Rydel in a real horrific performance)and he is the key for solving the mystery.

Dont expect a Marlowe regular. this film reflects the mood of one of the worst eras in US recent history, and its dark soul is masked by colors and brilliant directing and performance.

If you are looking for a traditional crime thriller you'll be disappointed. Piecing together the truth is abandoned in favour of a big reveal at the end.

What you get instead is an hour and a half of atmosphere, as Elliot Gould's Philip Marlowe drifts around Los Angeles, trying to be an honest man, trying to make sense of what is going on around him, but getting misled and mistreated by almost everyone he comes into contact with.

The colours are washed out. Scenes are shot in darkness, through windows, or in reflections. Altman's camera wanders around the scene as people are talking, and talking over one another.

Just sit back and soak it in.

Beautiful early John Williams score, really well shot. I wish more Altman films were this slick visually: many interesting visual things happening, reflections upon reflections, beautiful compositions. Plus, the film stock this was shot on looks more expensive than the one Altman usually uses. Makes this look more like a movie, and his other movies (aside from Gosford Park perhaps, which is also self-referential) look more like we're spying on actual happenings, from the graininess of the footage resembling home video almost. I must say The Long Goodbye has an admirably smart look about it due to this better film stock. Elliot Gould's performance of Marlowe as a man sort of drifing through this movie, like the naked hippies next door to him, fits well with Altman's depiction and send-up of contemporary (1973) LA. Funny motifs run throughout: the security guard who does impressions of Hollywood celebrities (Jimmy Stewart is probably his best) is lots of fun, and also Marlowe's temporamental cat provides amusement. Like with Dr T and the Women and MASH, however, the "jokes" in Altman comedies are not really intended just for empty amusment - so you don't necessarily laugh out loud. More often than not, though there is humour for humour's sake, the jokes are vicious, slap in the face-style, attacks at certain social constructs (or often just presentations of certain social biases, like treatment of blacks and women in MASH). Curios: Arnold Schwarzenegger before he was famous, playing the next step up from an extra, owing to his muscle man frame exposed in the scene where Augustine has his thugs and Marlowe strip so they'll be honest. He looks ridiculous with those breasts of his. Screenplay by THE Leigh Brackett, screenwriter of classic Bogart flick The Big Sleep (1946), based on another of Raymond Chandler's Marlowe novels. Obviously a lot of Chandler's overly complex plot had to be summarised, but i think Brackett (in an Altman movie most of the dialogue has been reworked by improvisation and rehearsal by the time it gets to the screen, but it was certainly Brackett who gave the overall structure of how it would be adapted and how much of the book could be told in the movie) did a good job with the hard task she was given - the plot of Chandler's novel is more convoluted than The Big Sleep, if that's any indication! Bottom line: what a great soundtrack! One of Altman's best movies, and one of his best shot. If you're not a fan of his ensemble movies (how could you not be, but still) here's one of his narrower, smaller cast movies that works really well.

Splendid film chronicles a Detective Story in this remarkably faithful adaptation from Raymond Chandler novel , though there are a couple of crucial changes and some spoofy lines , featuring world-weary private eye Philip Marlowe . It deals with down-on-his-luck detective Philip Marlowe (Elliot Gould , he improvised some scenes as when he smears fingerprint ink all over his face and original choices for this character were Lee Marvin and Robert Mitchum) tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife . Following the reported suicide in Mexico of a friend, a gorgeous woman (first English-language film of Danish actress Nina van Pallandt) hires him to locate her alcoholic and mercurial husband called Roger Wade (Sterling Hayden , this role had originally cast Altman's friend Dan Blocker but he died before filming commenced) . Then Marlowe being interrogated by Police Inspectors . The wisecracking eye private becomes involved into a dark world of killing , treason and leading in twisted results .

This enjoyable , hard-boiled though overlong film packs thrills , suspense , mayhem , some nice touches an exciting plot in ever-twisting directions , using that crisp Raymond Chandler narrative . Interesting adaptation by screenwriter Leigh Brackett who twenty-seven years earlier co-wrote the script for the classic The big sleep (1946). The picture offers a nicely detailed scenarios from Malibu ,in fact , the location for Sterling Hayden's home was actually Robert Altman's home at the time and the name of the private estate was "Malibu Colony". The movie was part of a predominantly 1970s revival cycle of pictures adapted from novels by Raymond Chandler . Likable acting by Elliot Gould as tough and cynical eye private . This was one of five movies actor Elliott Gould made with director Robert Altman , the films include M.A.S.H. (1970), Nashville (1975), The player (1992)and California Split (1974) . Very good support cast as Nina Van Pallandt is stunning as a Femme Fatale and sensational Sterling Hayden as her drank husband . There appears uncredited, a bearded David Carradine and Arnold Schwarzenegger as a muscleman but has no lines in the film . And special mention to director Mark Rydell as a violent Jewish mobster , he returned to acting for this movie after an absence of around a decade. Atmospheric as well as jokey musical score by the great John Williams , pre-collaboration to Spielberg , all the music in this film is different arrangements of the theme tune. Colorful cinematography by magnificent cameraman Vilmos Zsigmond , the camera is always moving ; there are no static shots in the movie ; Vilmos tried to approximate human vision through the post-production technique of exposing the undeveloped negative to additional pure light, which literally dampens blacks and softens intense colors .

Other films about this famous detective are the followings : ¨Murder my sweet¨(1944) by Edward Dmytryck starred by Dick Powell , ¨ The Big Sleep¨ version directed by Howard Hawks with Humphrey Bogart , ¨Big sleep¨ by Michael Winner with Robert Mitchum , ¨Marlowe¨ by Paul Bogart with James Garner , ¨Farewell my lovely¨ by Dick Richards with Robert Mitchum .

The motion picture was well directed by Robert Altman . At the beginning Altman realized Shorts and he then went to Hollywood to direct Alfred Hitchcock's TV show . From here, he went on to direct a large number of television shows, until he was offered the script for M.A.S.H. (1970) in 1969. He was hardly the producer's first choice - more than fifteen other directors had already turned it down . This wasn't his first movie, but it was his first success . After that, he had his share of hits and misses, but The prayer (1992) and, more recently, Gosford Park (2001) were particularly well .

Apparently when The Long Goodbye was released, many critics thought it was a parody. Perhaps Altman should have set out to lampoon Marlowe, he couldn't have done any more damage to the reputation of Chandler's superb novel.

Putting aside comparisons with the original work, as a film The Long Goodbye makes painful viewing. The casting is bizarre; Elliot Gould in no way conjures up Marlowe. The contemporary setting is incongruous; Marlowe's cynicism and barbs are very much tied to his age. As is his chain-smoking - Gould's constant lighting and relighting of his ciggies here just seems ludicrous. The seventies setting does allow Altman to throw in some topless co-ed neighbours, apparently for the titillation (no pun intended) of the crew.

The production value is questionable. Gould mumbles his lines and a lot of it seems dubbed. Even then, you have to strain to hear the dialogue much of the time. The film has a cheesy, made-for-TV look that is not all down to being made in the 1970s.

All great directors have their flops, and Altman is no exception. Peter Biskind cites rumours that Altman was drunk much of the time on set. I can only assume he was out of his skull shooting this one.