The Long Goodbye: Robert Altman’s hooray for… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

The Long Good­bye: Robert Altman’s hooray for Hollywood

07 Mar 2018

Words by Sam May

A man in a suit and tie standing in front of framed artwork on a wall.
A man in a suit and tie standing in front of framed artwork on a wall.
This 1973 pulp clas­sic sees Elliott Gould’s Philip Mar­lowe nav­i­gate LA’s seedy underbelly.

Robert Alt­man bor­rowed the title of Ray­mond Chandler’s The Long Good­bye for both his 1973 film, but it could just have eas­i­ly been called Hooray For Hol­ly­wood (the Doris Day song is iron­i­cal­ly played over the end cred­its); the Los Ange­les sub­urb draw­ing much of the direc­tors focus and itself as much a char­ac­ter as Elliott Gould’s Philip Marlowe.

A lot had changed in Hol­ly­wood since the book’s release in 1953 and the begin­ning of Altman’s involve­ment in the ear­ly 1970s. Mar­lowe, a man of morals and integri­ty seemed at odds with con­tem­po­rary soci­ety, though rather than becom­ing a stum­bling block this con­flict became the film’s the­mat­ic dri­ving force.

Gould’s inter­pre­ta­tion bears lit­tle resem­blance to the usu­al Marlowe’s arche­type, defined by the Bog­a­rt era, he shuf­fles and sham­bles, unkempt and wear­ing his suit like pyja­mas rather than as a state­ment of intent. But the PI’s moral code remains intact, the bur­den of con­science cast­ing him adrift in a soci­etal cesspool. And, of course, that ever-present cig­a­rette remains. Mar­lowe aver­ages one about every three min­utes, in the pulp era this would be com­mon­place, but now it earns him the nick­name Marl­boro man” and his free-spir­it­ed neigh­bours would much rather whip up some brown­ies’.

With pulp fic­tion out of fash­ion and Chandler’s work past its prime, a faith­ful adap­ta­tion was nev­er on the cards. Accord­ing­ly, screen­writer Leigh Brack­ett took many lib­er­ties with the nov­el to give it a more cin­e­mat­ic struc­ture, and in turn Alt­man devi­at­ed fur­ther still. The open­ing sequence where Mar­lowe unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempts to feed his cat was all Altman’s doing, and this dis­arm­ing moment out­lines the director’s true intention.

When Mar­lowe can­not pro­vide the right type of cat food – it’s Coury brand or noth­ing – the cat runs away. It turns out that the ani­mal has only been using Mar­lowe for food, and this dis­play of dis­loy­al­ty is lat­er mir­rored in the film’s end­ing, when it is revealed that Marlowe’s oth­er sup­posed friend, Ter­ry Lennox (Jim Bou­ton), has betrayed him. Marlowe’s sup­posed accep­tance with the hedo­nis­tic soci­ety (“It’s okay with me”) reach­es its end when he dis­cov­ers he has been used, and in an out-of-char­ac­ter moment he shoots Ter­ry. Alt­man felt this end­ing was so cru­cial he had it writ­ten into his con­tract that it could not be altered in the edit.

The idea to cre­ate a dis­con­nect between Mar­lowe and moder­ni­ty was devel­oped ear­ly on, with Alt­man jok­ing­ly refer­ring to him as Rip Van Mar­lowe’ as if he had just wok­en from his 40s and 50s hey­day. The film rep­re­sent­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty for Alt­man to satirise rather than remain faith­ful to the hard-boiled genre, instead revis­ing it for the present day, just as he did with the war genre in M*A*S*H, the west­ern in McCabe & Mrs Miller and the musi­cal in Nashville. Gone were the harsh shad­ows and venet­ian blinds, replaced with a woozy, bleary-eyed haze.

Not so much hard-boiled as a shag­gy-dog sto­ry about a cat, the plot is not the director’s pri­ma­ry con­cern. Rather, his focus is on the char­ac­ters and their inter­ac­tions – and in Altman’s Hol­ly­wood, char­ac­ters serve them­selves rather than the plot. Events unfold unpre­dictably, and no one but Mar­lowe is inter­est­ed in tying every­thing togeth­er if there’s no promise of per­son­al gain. The world is at odds with Mar­lowe, and Alt­man empha­sis­es his dis­dain through­out the film.

Aside from the cast­ing of reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tor Gould (who owned Marlowe’s 48 Lin­coln Con­ti­nen­tal), oth­er char­ac­ters became embell­ished by their actor’s off-screen lives, par­tic­u­lar­ly that of Eileen and Roger Wade, played by Nina Van Pal­landt and Ster­ling Hay­den. Pal­landt had suf­fered a messy affair Howard Hugh­es hoax­er Clif­ford Irv­ing, and her musi­cal duo Nina & Fred­er­ick famous­ly cov­ered Puff, the Mag­ic Drag­on’, a song that chimed with a Cal­i­for­nia which had swapped tobac­co for mar­i­jua­na. And Hay­den – who had fall­en foul of The House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee – had long been racked with the guilt of nam­ing names, per­fect­ly cap­tured Nixon-era paranoia.

Along with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Vil­mos Zsig­mond, Alt­man uses the visu­als to side the audi­ence with Mar­lowe; the cam­era is in con­stant motion and images are often obscured by nat­ur­al fram­ing in order to cre­ate a voyeuris­tic effect, much in the way that Mar­lowe expe­ri­ences events being a PI. It’s almost as if the audi­ence should not be wit­ness. This also adds to the film’s unpre­dictabil­i­ty – so much so that many were led to believe the dia­logue was large­ly impro­vised, which was not the case.

Alt­man want­ed to evoke old post­cards for the film’s palette, some­thing more like mem­o­ry. Fit­ting with the notion of Marlowe’s long slum­ber, Zsig­mond sug­gest­ed flash­ing’ the film stock, which the pair had exper­i­ment­ed with on McCabe & Mrs Miller. This meant expos­ing the neg­a­tive to excess light reduc­ing the con­trast and soft­en­ing the Tech­ni­col­or spec­trum to more pas­tel hues to cre­ate to films fabled haze-like effect, induc­ing into the world of Mar­lowe. The sound­track also has a belea­guer­ing effect. The epony­mous track (com­posed by a pre-Spiel­berg fame John Williams) morphs and mutates through dif­fer­ent sources – a dive bar piano, mar­ket muzak and even a Mex­i­can march­ing band – in order to cre­ate a con­tin­u­a­tion of disorientation.

Marlowe’s jour­ney through the seedy under­bel­ly of Altman’s Hol­ly­wood cre­at­ed a mar­ket­ing dilem­ma, with the stu­dio unsure of exact­ly how to con­vey the film’s tone. It was ulti­mate­ly released under a more tra­di­tion­al guise, with the tagline Noth­ing says good­bye like a bul­let.’ Because of this, the film flopped, fail­ing so cat­a­stroph­i­cal­ly that Alt­man pulled it from the­atres entire­ly to focus on a new mar­ket­ing approach. It was even­tu­al­ly re-launched in New York, with a tongue-in-cheek MAD Mag­a­zine style poster, with quip­ping car­i­ca­tures such as Pal­landt and Alt­man with the to and fro: How do you want me to play it?” From memory!”

Though suc­cess­ful in its sec­ond run it was too lit­tle too late. A film based on Chan­dler – though not pre­sent­ed in the style of typ­i­cal cin­e­mat­ic Chan­dler – had alien­at­ed its core audi­ence. But Alt­man always believed his Mar­lowe was faith­ful to Chandler’s char­ac­ter. Gould had made him fal­li­ble and flawed, his inter­pre­ta­tion a stark con­trast – in obvi­ous ways – to ear­li­er, more hero­ic incar­na­tions. Alt­man knew it wasn’t Chan­dler that audi­ences were want­i­ng, it was Bog­a­rt. But when Mar­lowe exits into the dis­tance at the end of the film – with a skip in his step and a click of his heels – the feel­ing is that this is unmis­tak­ably an Alt­man film. Hooray for Hol­ly­wood indeed.

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