'THE LONG GOODBYE'........ROBERT ALTMAN'S 'THE GOULD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY'....

The Long Goodbye (1973)    Various 1970's filmmakers took a whack at duplicating 1940's Private Eye Noir........

            Some were fussy, meticulous pastiches or out-and-out spoofs. A few directors bent the genre to their own particular creative will....(most prominently, Roman Polanski's "Chinatown")

             A year before "Chinatown", the then reigning King of Iconoclastic Quirk, Robert Altman found a way to collide the sarcastic but morally rigid 40's noir with the spaced-out 1970's, the era of who-really-gives-a-shit and it's-all-about-me-baby..........

             Altman came armed with an adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel by veteran screenwriter Leigh Brackett, whose illustrious career as both a Hollywood scribe and sci-fi novelist stretched all the way back to the Bogart/Bacall/Chandler "The Big Sleep."   ("The Long Goodbye", sadly, would be one of her last scripts before her death, along with the first draft of "The Empire Strikes Back")

              As if that wasn't enough to make this film a tantalizing project, for the role of wisecracking private eye Philip Marlowe, Altman chose to resurrect the floundering career of Elliot Gould.

             Gould had physically and creatively burned himself out with non-stop string of roles in which he more or less repeated his "MASH" character......the amiable shlub railing against the idiocies of authority figures.

               Altman's conception (and a brilliant one, we think) ........... present Gould's Philip Marlowe as a 1940's guy, dazed and confused as Alice In Wonderland while he attempts to navigate his way through the casual, careless morally upside down atmosphere of the 1970's.

               If you're willing to sit back and immerse yourselves in all the film's trademark Altman-isms.........the overlapping dialogue, the improvisational acting, the almost documentary feel of remotely observing the characters' behavior......then the film's a deliciously dark comedy.

               Jokes abound, sometimes sly, sometimes shockingly blunt. The entire soundtrack consists of endlessly covered versions of an imitative noirish ballad written by John Williams and Johnny Mercer. Everybody has a crack at it, including the supermarket Muzak and even a passing Mexican funeral procession band.

               And then there's the added fun of Altman's chosen supporting cast, a wild and crazy eclectic mixture......Nina van Pallandt, baseball pitcher Jim Bouton, comedian Henry Gibson.......and grand old Hollywood maverick Sterling Hayden  (supposedly roaring drunk for real in all his scenes).

                But the joker in this deck, far and away......film director Mark Rydell joyously hamming it up as a motor-mouthed psychotic gangster. In his confrontation with Gould (surrounded by his hoods, including a non-speaking Arnold Shwarzenegger), Rydell gives the film its most memorable moment, disturbing and sickly humorous all at once.

                Altman's intentionally restless camera follows Gould around as he wittily underplays his disdain and bewilderment, hopelessly searching for truth (or sense) in his strange tour through a madhouse of self-absorbed Southern California nutballs.   In the film's shock-twist ending, Gould finally does have the last word on this bunch.......a finale that Altman had to contractually protect from any studio tampering.

              Even though the film is pure Altman and pure Gould, it couldn't find an audience at the time of its release........years had to go by to build its reputation. BQ says don't let any more time go by before giving this a view.  It's a one-of-kind 70s/40's Noir......and for us, that earns it 4 wide open private eyes.....(****)