The Long Goodbye (1973)
US 112m, Colour
Director: Robert Altman; Cast: Elliott Gould, Nina Van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Jim Bouton, Mark Rydell
The Long Goodbye is a crime thriller set in the 1970s that is based on the 1953 Raymond Chandler novel of the same name about private detective Philip Marlowe. Entangled in a complicated murder mystery involving his friend Terry who is said to have killed his wife and escaped to Mexico before committing suicide, Marlowe comes to believe that Terry is both innocent and very much alive. Much like the film noir films of the 1940s, The Long Goodbye is a slowly twisting story in which everyone is a suspect and no one is truly innocent (Klaus Ming May 2013).
3 comments on “The Long Goodbye (1973)”
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ming movie reviews 
How did I not notice before that you’d reviewed this?
One of my favorite Altman films (and, really, one of my favorite movies). And what a great demonstration of Altman’s skill with actors — there are people in this movie who shouldn’t (by conventional thinking) be on the screen together, and every performance is first rate.
And I love the ending (yet another illustration that movies don’t have to slavishly follow the books they’re based on).
I reviewed it here: http://u-town.com/collins/?p=1107
I recall this as being an odd film -that took me a while to warm up to, but one that i’ll definitely revisit.
In the comic book Hawkeye, generally considered one of the best (if not the best) superhero comic out now, Kate Bishop (the younger “Hawkeye”) has just moved to LA on a “journey of self-discovery.” Needing money, she’s trying to hire herself out as a freelance superhero/private investigator (plus light housekeeping), and when tackling her first case she’s in a supermarket in the middle of the night, and she meets a detective with curly hair and a battered trench coat (looking for food for his cat), and he becomes her mentor, making it clear to her that she can’t operate by the same rules as the villains she’s after. I’m sure most readers of the comic think he’s a creation of the comic, but anybody who’s seen this movie knows exactly who he is.