[Film Review] The Long Goodbye (1973) and Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

Two screen adaptations of Raymond Chandler’s private eye Philip Marlowe novels, Robert Altman’s THE LONG GOODBYE stars a cool-as-a-cucumber Elliott Gould as our hero, with its milieu transposed from the 50s’ noir soil to a hippies-inflected 70s’ hedonism. Two years later, Dick Richards’s FAREWELL, MY LOVELY cherrypicks another cool-guy Robert Mitchum to play the gumshoe, the catch is that Mitchum was almost twice the age of Marlowe in the novel, set in 1941, his Marlowe looks already over the hill and laments over his jadedness about his line of business. Incidentally, both film feature a future action-picture kingpin, Schwarzenegger in the former, and Stallone in the latter.

THE LONG GOODBYE opens with Marlowe waking up in the wee hours and failing to procure the proper food for his pet cat (featuring one of the most finicky feline performances ever), the futility of his actions is loud and clear, which can be reflected upon his later attempt to clear the name of his late friend Terry Lennox (baseball pro player Bouton), who leaves a written confession of murdering his wife before killing himself. Marlowe doesn’t believe Lennox is the type who is capable of committing such grisly barbarity. Can he be wrong?

In FAREWELL, MY LOVELY, Marlowe is spotted by bank robber Moose Malloy (former boxer O'Halloran in his celluloid debut), who is freshly out of the joint and eager to find his old girlfriend Velma, so he hires Marlowe. Not deterred by the fact that someone obviously wants to rub out Malloy (hiding from bullets on the street when they first meet), Marlowe tracks down the breadcrumb trail with enough phlegm, even when he is abducted and drugged by the notorious madam Frances Amthor (a formidable Murtagh), a trippy paroxysm of hallucinations displays Richards and DP John A. Alonzo’s prestidigitation.

Sultry women tickle Marlowe’s interest, in both cases, but with a difference. Gould’s Marlowe is intrigued by Eileen Wade (van Pallandt, a swarthy beaut), wife of Roger Wade (Hayden), a bibulous novelist of note, who may not be above physical violence when he is plastered, but remains supernally chaste; whereas Mitchum’s Marlowe shares a blatant kiss with Helen (Rampling, pulling off a striking Bacall impression), the drop-dead gorgeous trophy wife of Judge Grayle (famed hardboiled crime fiction novelist Jim Thompson in a cameo role), right under the later’s disapproving eyes, and he has no misgivings of conducting an assignation with a potential femme fatale. A roué with an upright backbone, that is Marlowe in FAREWELL, MY LOVELY.

However, it is Gould’s Marlowe who registers a more magnetic allure, bandying about his pet phrase “It’s ok with me” whenever he is flummoxed, he is very much detached from the world around him, a loner with only a cat for company (who runs away after the prologue), he is the embodiment of existential fatalism, not blinking an eye even when he faces imminent danger (director Mark Rydell rises to the occasion as a bone-chilling gangster with a nasty streak). A chain-smoking Gould exemplifies the ultimate “coolness” of his era, which makes the final reveal and that blasting gunshot immeasurably satisfying, poetic justice prevails in a callous, immoral world. Next to which, the final reveal in FAREWELL, MY LOVELY has less surprising impact and that death-dealing gunshot is more knee-jerking than cathartic.

Overall, in Chandler’s creation, crime, alcoholism and homicide permeate L.A.’s underbelly. Marlowe’s comfort zone is still a homosocial one, attraction from the opposite sex always leads him up the garden path, and most importantly, private investigator is not a vocation to get minted. Female characters are rarely innocent bimbos, often they are culprits or damaged goods (Miles is bodacious as Jessie Florian, a woman dying for a shot glass of hooch, a second Oscar nomination proves MIDNIGHT COWBOYS isn’t a flash in the pan), a misogynistic slant cannot be overlooked.

In the mass, THE LONG GOODBYE informs something more innately perverse and engrossingly sleazy on the strength of Altman’s trenchant execution and sharp judgment of signs of the times, which humbles FAREWELL, MY LOVELY into a more run-of-the-mill neo-noir fable attacking come-hither gold-digger without pointing out the elephant in the room, why a doddering man like Judge Grayle wants to marry a wicked minx like Helen in the first place? The answer is plain as day.

referential entries: Altman’s 3 WOMEN (1977, 8.2/10); Robert Benton’s THE LATE SHOW (1977, 6.8/10); George Marshall’s THE BLUE DAHLIA (1946, 6.7/10); Howard Hawks’s THE BIG SLEEP (1946, 8.4/10).

Title: The Long Goodbye

Year: 1973

Genre: Crime, Drama

Country: USA

Language: English

Director: Robert Altman

Screenwriter: Leigh Brackett

Based on the novel by Raymond Chandler

Music: John Williams

Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond

Editor: Lou Lombardo

Cast:

Elliott Gould

Nina van Pallandt

Sterling Hayden

Mark Rydell

Henry Gibson

Jim Bouton

David Arkin

Jo Ann Brody

Stephen Coit

Warren Berlinger

Jack Knight

Pancho Córdova

Jerry Jones

John Davies

David Carradine

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Rating: 7.8/10

Title: Farewell, My Lovely

Year: 1975

Genre: Crime, Mystery, Thriller

Country: USA

Language: English

Director: Dick Richards

Screenwriter: David Zelag Goodman

Based on the novel by Raymond Chandler

Music: David Shire

Cinematography: John A. Alonzo

Editors: Joel Cox, Walter Thompson

Cast:

Robert Mitchum

Charlotte Rampling

John Ireland

Sylvia Miles

Jack O’Halloran

Anthony Zerbe

Harry Dean Stanton

John O’Leary

Kate Murtagh

Jimmie Archer

Walter McGinn

Sylvester Stallone

Joe Spinell

Logan Ramsey

Jim Thompson

Rainbeaux Smith

Rating: 6.9/10