Long Goodbye shows humor,
subtlety second time around
n ...
Robert Altman's vesr-nlH film Tho i nnn
Goodbye is one of those rarities of the
cinema that successfully are re-released with
a new ad campaign after having been an
earlier box office bomb.
Last year the ads were showing
detective-hero Phillip Marlowe (Elliot
Gould) as a loner, a solitary figure standing
on a deserted beach looking out at the
ocean. Now they are playing up the film as a
comedy, using caricature cartoons and
hoping Altman's previous efforts (MA SH
and Brewster McCloud) will pull in the
audiences.
While The Long Goodbye is often a very
funny movie, retaining many of the subtle
inanities of Altman's other work, it also has
an unconscious depth and feeling that goes
beyond this. Either way, it's a darn good
movie.
Marlowe is the detective creation of
Raymond Chandler who was one of the best
pulp fiction writers from 1930-50. Marlowe
has been played on the screen by many
actors but perhaps never as memorably as by
Humphrey Bogart in Howard Hawk's 1946
movie The Big Sleep. Marlowe, then, was the
tough guy with a code. He was poor and a
loner, but he had romantic machismo and
unyielding dignity amid corruption.
Altman has Gould maintain much of that
style, but in such a way that it often seems a
comical parody of the role. Gould
constantly is striking wooden matches on
any surface in sight and smokes more
cigarettes in one movie than anyone since
Bogart. Both actors have a characteristic lisp,
but while Bogart's became part of his
tough-guy aura, Gould's almost is faggish. He
drives around Los Angeles in an old '48
Lincoln, mumbles most of his dialogue in a
barely audible monotone and takes great
care of his best friend, a cat.
Marlowe, in typical Chandler fashion, is a
loser. Everyone else (the cops, his clients,
even one of his best friends) seems to know
what's going on while he doggedly wanders
around trying to find some answers. But he
is smart, determined and just effective
enough that with a lot of luck, he gets the
job done. It is hard for an old fashioned
private1 Cye to' cope amid the weird
characters' "and foibles of modern Los
Angeles' social life.
Like other Chandler novels that have
been filmed, the plot line here becomes
entangled, with a host of seemingly
divergent characters and incidents popping
up along the way. (Screenwriters on The Big
Sleep, including William Faulkner, often
were baffled by that story.) Finally, though,
they all come together in a quick "Now I see
what's going on" resolution at film's end.
One of Marlowe's best friends apparently
has murdered his wife and committed
suicide, but Marlowe doesn't believe it.
While investigating a case for a wealthy
young woman (Nina van Pallandt) trying to
find her crazy writer-husband, Roger Wade
(a Hemingway caricature marvelously played
by Sterling Hayden), he becomes involved
with a vain, playboy mobster searching for a
lost $350,000. Everyone ultimately ties back
to Marlowe's friend Terry Lennox
(ex-Yankee pitcher Jim Bouton) who did kill
his wife but faked the suicide to get away.
There is little violence in the movie, but
what there is comes so suddenly and
unexpectedly that it stuns. The scene in
which Marlowe tries to rescue Wade from a
suicide attempt is breathtakingly stylized
filmmaking.
greg lukow
ky grip
These scenes, combined with the elusive
plot, may make the movie's pieces seem
better than the whole, but I don't think this
is true.
There are flaws in the story, and some of
the myths Altman tries to explode seem to
throw themselves back at him.
But Altman's humor, depth and craft rise
above any trouble spots.
Perhaps he speaks best in a final scene
that is both ambitious and ambiguous.
Lennox had used Marlowe to get away, and
when Marlowe finally finds him, he laughs
and says "You always were a born loser."
"Yeah," replies Marlowe, "I even lost my
cat." Then he pulls out a gun and kills
Lennox without warning.
As we see him walking away in the
distance, jaunting along with baffling
exuberance, we know that, for Altman, the
Phillip Marlowes of the movies are gone.
They have been replaced by the Popeye
Doyles and the Dirty Harrys.
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