The Long Goodbye (1973)

Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe is one of the great recurring figures of American crime fiction, a world-weary private eye whose cases have been adapted for the screen more times than most people can count. Robert Altman's 1973 take on the character, based on Chandler's 1953 novel of the same name, is among the more unusual entries in that tradition. Where earlier screen Marlowes tended to play things relatively straight, Altman and screenwriter Leigh Brackett (who had co-written the Howard Hawks adaptation of The Big Sleep back in 1946) transplanted the detective wholesale into the sun-baked, morally slack atmosphere of early 1970s Los Angeles. The result is a film that sits at an odd angle to the genre it nominally belongs to, part procedural, part character study, part comment on the city itself.

Altman was in a particularly fertile stretch of his career at the time, coming off the success of M*A*S*H (1970) and McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), and he brought to The Long Goodbye the same loose, improvisational sensibility that made those films feel so distinctive. The picture was produced by United Artists and Lion's Gate Films, with a runtime of 112 minutes, and carries the tagline "Nothing says goodbye like a bullet," which tells you something about the tone being aimed for. It is worth noting that the film received a fairly muted reception on its initial release before critical opinion warmed to it considerably over the following years, a fairly common fate for films that don't sit comfortably in a recognisable box. If you enjoy picking through other films from this era, there are reviews on the site for Westworld (1973) and Fantastic Planet (1973), both of which give a reasonable sense of just how varied 1973 was as a year for cinema.

Elliott Gould takes the lead as Marlowe, playing the role with a mumbling, distracted quality that was quite deliberate on Altman's part, a conscious rejection of the cool, commanding detective archetype. Alongside him, Nina van Pallandt brings a cool and poised presence as one of the key figures in Marlowe's investigation, while Sterling Hayden, a genuinely underrated screen presence, appears in a substantial supporting role. Mark Rydell (better known as a director himself) and Henry Gibson round out a cast that, on paper at least, looks polished but unremarkable. Whether that translates to the screen is, of course, the question. For those who enjoy a good mystery, the site also has coverage of The 39 Steps (1935), another film where the mechanics of plot and the mood around them pull in slightly different directions.

He strikes matches on everything in sight. I didn't know what to expect going into this really. When I saw the plot I thought it was going to be a detective movie and instead it's more like one of those neo-noir murder mysteries. The story itself was pretty good and keeps you guessing and the end is great, it's just a little too long. The lead actor Elliot Gould is just not very good and a little annoying to be honest. It's slightly above average.

I think that tension between the genre's familiar pleasures and Altman's habit of undercutting them is really what defines the experience of watching this one. When it works, it genuinely works, and the ending in particular lands with a satisfying abruptness that earns its place. The pacing, though, is the sort of thing that tests your patience in the quieter stretches, and a lead performance that grates rather than draws you in makes those stretches feel longer than they need to. There is enough here to make it worth a watch, especially if you have a tolerance for films that treat the plot as something to wander around rather than race through. Just maybe not one to put on if you have somewhere to be.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1973  | Watched: 2025-05-03

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Trailer

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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)