A Long Goodbye - Film Review

A Long Goodbye (1973) is a private eye detective film directed by Robert Altman and starring Elliot Gould as detective Phillip Marlowe. Based on the novel which came out 20 years earlier, Altman has developed everything the novel saw except Marlowe. He's a guy who still believes in the kind of moral code that comes with a license of being a private eye detective. A guy that stands up and defends his friends, even when they're on questionable grounds and maybe at his expense, (the plot). A guy that casually says "here's the address where I'm going, just in case you lose me in traffic" to the muscle hired to follow him. A guy who doesn't stop smoking, he does in every single scene by casually flicking matches of inanimate objects that he happens to pass by. His general attitude just doesn't seem to belong in the modern world of 1973 to what he is based on 20 years earlier. But he doesn't mind.
The whole film follows Marlowe around, beginning with a 3am drive to the 24hr grocery store to try and find his cat the specific brand of cat food it likes. Whilst on his way he walks past these very attractive, always semi naked girls who he doesn't seem to notice throughout the film. I think this is the start of an ongoing joke running through the film showing his very laid back attitude and being a detective in general.

With the whole film being very slow and laid back Altman did introduce a couple of rather shocking scenes to wake the audience up in my opinion. This included the head gangster hitting his wife with a coke bottle which made a lot of the audience jump as it was completely out of the blue. It was very smart of Altman to include scenes like this as most parts had cheap slapstick comedy which I did like but were rather obvious and kind of easy to full asleep to.
My favourite part of the movie would have to be the scene just after Marlowe shows what he is really capable of by shooting one of his best friends; Terry Lennox. He then strolls away down a long path with the camera panning out whilst he plays the theme song 'A Long Goodbye' on his harmonica and as he does this he passes Eileen without saying a word. I thought this was a great ending to the movie, as he's let all his anger out on Terry and on his cat dying.

During the movie I noticed the camera is always constantly moving, even if its slow which I think sums up the title and presentation of the film. This is followed by the theme tune 'A long Goodbye' which has a constant eery occurrence throughout the film which may be slightly annoying for me whilst I was watching it but it does help link different pieces of the film together, especially the end sequence.