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Trust Weighted
OK
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66Trust Points
Wick's Review
Summary - OK 2.5 click to collapse contents
More an oddball curiosity than a successful movie, The Long Goodbye dropped a Forties private-eye story into the Seventies. Robert Altman used that juxtaposition to show how times had changed in the twenty years since the Raymond Chandler novel on which the movie is based came out. That it does, albeit the subsequent forty years reveal the whole thing as a bit of a mess, not unlike the Me Decade itself.
Thus the movie is more Altman than Chandler, starting with the satiric director casting his MASH star Elliott Gould as legendary detective Philip Marlowe. This Marlowe comes across as more Groucho than Bogie, more a big nebbish than a cool customer. Indeed the whole thing has a Jewish satire feel to it, what with a stereotypical Jew playing a goy who goes up against a bad Jew in Mark Rydell’s psychotic mobster.
Unfortunately the movie plays today as largely flat, not effervescent like high quality satire should. It comes across as stupidly hard-bitten, and misogynistic to boot. IOW, for all its ironic affectations, it is a typical Hollywood confection.
That said, it finally gets gripping when an alcoholic and his wife argue about their marriage. Unfortunately The Long Goodbye has long outworn its welcome by then.