The Long Goodbye (1973)
★★★ — The Long Goodbye (1973)
He strikes matches on everything in sight. On walls, on brickwork, on whatever surface happens to be within reach. It's a strange little tic, the kind of detail that lodges in your brain long after the film's finished, and honestly it's more memorable than a lot of what Elliott Gould is actually doing on screen. That's both a compliment to Robert Altman's direction and a fairly damning comment on the lead performance.
I'll be honest, I went into The Long Goodbye expecting a straight detective picture. The setup sounds like one: private eye, missing friend, suspicious circumstances. What I got instead was something slipperier, a neo-noir that's less interested in whodunit mechanics than in atmosphere, mood and the particular way Los Angeles seems to swallow people whole. That surprised me, and I mean that in mostly a good way.
The story genuinely keeps you guessing. There's a looseness to the plotting that could easily tip into frustration, and occasionally it does, but more often it works in the film's favour. You're never quite sure where your trust is supposed to land, and when the ending arrives it hits with a real jolt. I won't say more than that, but it earns its ending in a way a lot of noirs don't. It's the kind of conclusion that makes you sit back and reconsider everything you've just watched, and I respect a film that can pull that off.
The problem, and it's not a small one, is Gould. His Philip Marlowe is a shambling, muttering, perpetually distracted figure, and I think that's at least partly the point. Altman seems to be deliberately dismantling the myth of the cool, competent detective. But there's a difference between a character who's intentionally a bit hapless and a performance that's just a bit annoying, and for long stretches I wasn't sure which I was watching. Gould has moments where it clicks, but he also has stretches where I found myself wishing someone else was in the frame. When the film works best, it's almost in spite of him rather than because of him.
And it is, as the title perhaps should have warned me, a little too long. Altman lingers. Sometimes the lingering pays off, building something genuinely uneasy. Other times you're just waiting for the scene to end. There's probably a tighter, sharper version of this film that lands closer to four stars, but what we've got runs out of steam in the middle before pulling itself together for that finale.
It's an interesting companion piece to other films coming out of Hollywood in 1973. I reviewed Westworld (1973) not too long ago, and there's a similar sense across both films of genre being used as a delivery mechanism for something more unsettling underneath. That year had filmmakers in a strange, probing mood.
Three stars. Slightly above average, as I say, and I mean that genuinely rather than as a backhanded dismissal. There's enough here to make it worth your time, particularly if you've got patience for Altman's style and a high tolerance for Elliott Gould's particular brand of screen presence. Just don't expect a conventional detective ride, and maybe keep one eye on the clock.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 1973 | Watched: 2025-05-03
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
More mystery: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Carnival of Souls (1962) · One Way or Another (1975)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
