Ill-Informed Gadfly

Visually, this is one of Robert Altman’s savviest and most beautiful movies. As he did in two other gorgeous films, “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” and the aptly titled “Images,” Altman worked with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, whose talent for layered compositions within the widescreen frame, whether in brilliant sunlight or pitch darkness, places him in the first rank of movie artists. “The Long Goodbye” has a dreamy, seductive texture, thanks in no small part to Zsigmond’s technique of “flashing” exposed film with light. It’s a tremendously risky practice that can ruin your footage, and it’s hard to imagine any director but Altman letting him do it. Zsigmond’s poetic use of light and Altman’s constantly moving camera (there isn’t a single static shot) make “The Long Goodbye,” released in 1973, a feast for connoisseurs of movie art. It’s jazzy and alive, an extended riff on L.A. and the movies. Altman finds an aural equivalent in the title song, by John Williams, which he repeats again and again, in different styles.

The form suits the content, of course. Like “Chinatown,” “The Long Goodbye” is not so much film noir as film blanc, a movie that uses L.A.’s perpetual sunshine to illuminate dastardly deeds. It places Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s cynical but noble private dick immortalized by Humphrey Bogart in “The Big Sleep,” amid the moral relativism of the early 70s. Altman is interested in the end of honor. Marlowe is a relic, one who must adapt or perish, and at the bleak and resonant climax, one that offended Chandler purists, Marlowe 2.0 emerges into the world.

Elliott Gould plays Marlowe as a mumbling, loosey-goosey hipster — a fresh and contemporary take on the role, as far away from Bogart as possible. Or is it? Like many Altman films, “The Long Goodbye” comes together only with repeated viewings. What Gould reveals — subtly, incrementally — is that although Marlowe’s mannerisms have changed, his soul is the same. Plus, he hasn’t entirely adapted. He wears a suit, all the time. He drives a late-40s sedan. He chain-smokes. He does his business out of a dingy bar. It’s easy to read his easygoing manner as a defense mechanism, something he’s adopted in a fruitless effort to relate to people he doesn’t understand. Or perhaps he doesn’t quite understand himself. “It’s OK with me” is his catchphrase, and I think he realizes as the audience does that it’s not OK with him.

Altman wasn’t great at talking about his work; Pauline Kael said it was because he works so close to his unconscious. She’s right, but he spoke about “The Long Goodbye” with rare lucidity. He said his concept was “Rip Van Marlowe”: Marlowe has been asleep for a quarter-century and wakes up to find the world has passed him by. The opening scene finds him being woken by his cat. The cat is important. First of all, I’ve never seen a better performance by a tabby cat in a motion picture, and if you’ve seen “Day for Night” you know it’s hard to find a cat that can act. This feline has impeccable timing. He badgers Marlowe for food, but Marlowe doesn’t have the brand he likes, so he goes to an all-night grocery store, but they don’t have it either. So he lies to his cat, putting the food in the empty can of the brand he prefers before letting the cat in the kitchen, but the cat sees through the charade and runs outside.

Marlowe never sees his companion again, and it gnaws at him. I truly think he feels guilty about lying to the cat, about failing to provide for him, and the emptiness he feels after losing his pet informs his journey to uncover exactly what exactly happened to his friend Terry Lennox (ex-major league pitcher Jim Bouton, oozing unctuousness). Lennox shows up right after the cat leaves, bleeding from a fight with his wife, and asks Marlowe to drive him to Mexico. When Marlowe gets back, he finds out Lennox’s wife is dead, and he spends a few days cooling in jail for failing to rat on his friend, only to be sprung when it’s reported that Lennox is dead, too. Marlowe’s quest takes him to the exclusive Malibu compound where Lennox lived, adjacent to an elegant, fragile woman (Nina van Pallandt) and her alcoholic, Hemingwayesque husband (the great, volcanic Sterling Hayden).

Watch how guarded Gould is in his scenes with these two, only to zero in on van Pallandt, like a seasoned interrogator, with a series of piercing questions when she’s at her most vulnerable. Gould drops the mannerisms here, allowing the real Marlowe to emerge. Bogart would have been proud.

Around the margins, Altman elicits laughs from the loopy, self-absorbed behavior of the early Me Decade, and he allows violence to intrude suddenly and shockingly. Look out for the young, musclebound Arnold Schwarzenegger, as a goon attached to oily, unhinged mobster Marty Augustine (Mark Rydell). “The Long Goodbye” envisions a world that would be strange and dangerous for anyone to navigate, much less a noble private eye from a bygone era. No wonder he can’t figure things out, and no wonder he must finally achieve justice on starker, uglier terms than he or his fans are accustomed to.