The Wrong Goodbye

Jack Davis poster art

Chandler fans will hate my guts. I don't give a damn. Robert Altman 

(I’m not a Chandler fan, so I don’t hate Altman’s guts. But I’m not an Altman fan, either.) 

A movie adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel The Long Goodbye had been in the works since 1965. Chandler’s Marlowe novels were selling consistently, and the success of the movie Marlowe (1969), which was based on Chandler’s novel The Little Sister, proved that the decades-old material could be updated (even if the movie was mediocre and James Garner was a poor substitute for Humphrey Bogart; clearly, Marlowe’s LA could only be updated at a heavy price). 

Eventually, a screenplay was derived from The Long Goodbye, Chandler’s longest novel (125,000 words), by none other than Leigh Brackett, the same writer who worked with William Faulkner on the script for The Big Sleep in 1946. The producers, Jerry Bick and Elliott Kastner, got Robert Altman, who was trending heavily at the time, on board. He worked with Brackett on the script and agreed that the only way the movie could be done was as a satire – an old fashioned private eye’s thoroughly dim view of an LA that Chandler never lived to see. If Chandler’s vision of the hills and canyons of Southern California was jaundiced enough in 1952 (the year The Long Goodbye was published), Altman’s could be realized only by finding what was inherently ridiculous in the setting and the people who called it – however reluctantly – home.

Altman decided to make Marlowe into what he called “Rip Van Marlowe” – the private eye who’d slept for twenty years and awoke in 1972. So his Marlowe spends almost the entire film wearing a dark suit while incessantly lighting and smoking cigarettes. He also drives a 1948 Lincoln Continental Cabriolet everywhere and lives perched atop a building in what might be Laurel Canyon (where Marlowe lived in the novel). 

Altman’s choice of Elliott Gould for the role was inspired. In his very first scene he gets out of bed at 3 AM to feed his cat. Having run out of canned cat food, Gould prepares something that looks like cottage cheese and raw eggs. The cat knocks the dish onto the floor. So Gould goes out to shop for the only brand of cat food that his cat will eat. When he can’t find it, and brings home a different brand, Gould closes the kitchen door while he transfers the wrong brand cat food to an empty can of the favorite brand. He lets the cat in the door and pretends to open the can, but when he offers it to the cat, it disgustedly leaves the house through an improvised cat door with the words “El Porto del Gato” written on it. It’s the last we ever see of the gato. 

Just after the cat’s exit, Terry Lennox enters Gould’s house. We get mixed signals from Altman about Terry Lennox. He probably murdered his wife (when we first see him he has fresh scratches on his left cheek and blood on his hand), but he deliberately incriminates Marlowe by getting him to drive him to Tijuana. This gets Marlowe three days in jail when Sylvia Lennox’s bloodied body is found and Terry’s movements lead straight to him. Terry has since committed unconvincing suicide in a Mexican town after writing a full confession. This satisfies the police, but not a Jewish mob boss named Marty Augustine to whom Terry owes a lot of money. He visits Marlowe demanding the whereabouts of his money. To convince Marlowe of his capricious brutishness, he smashes a Coke bottle on his girlfriend’s face. 

Augustine next pays a visit to Roger Wade in Malibu (Robert Altman’s own Malibu house was used for the shoot) to demand repayment of money he owes him. Eileen Wade, Roger’s wife, had hired Marlowe to find her missing husband. A chronic alcoholic, the only lead Roger leaves is a note he had written mentioning a “Doctor V.” Marlowe tracks him to a private clinic run by Doctor Verringer populated by various pixilated patients. Marlowe finds Roger in a private cabin where Verringer is demanding that he sign a check for an amount of money that Verringer says he owes him. Marlowe makes his presence known and persuades Roger to leave with him – without signing the check. 

Some of the novel’s convoluted plot is intact in the movie, but much is not. Leigh Brackett justified her omissions by insisting that the book was “riddled with clichés” and far too long. The cliché complaint is curious because Marlowe is a walking/talking cliché, but the reactions he elicits from the people around him showcase the utter absurdity of drunken writers, the fidelity of their long-suffering wives, the brutality of mob bosses (and the vanity of their bodyguards), the stupidity of cops, dictatorial doctors who only cure for a fee, the timeless refuge of Mexico, and even the perpetual nudity of aspiring dancers. The cinematography, by the illustrious Vilmos Zsigmond, is nostalgically diffused. Altman wanted the camera to be like an eavesdropper, peering through windows and pacing around a stationary subject. But Altman’s greatest stroke is in the casting. Besides Gould as the last word in private eyes, Mark Rydell plays Marty Augustine, a Jewish gangster who wears a star of David necklace. He is terribly funny because he is far too reasonable. Sterling Hayden plays Roger Wade and can’t help coming across as another Hemingway impersonator. Much of his dialogue had to be improvised because Hayden was four sheets to the wind during shooting. Nina Van Pallandt’s somewhat faded beauty, as Wade’s wife Eileen, is perfectly at home in Southern California. So is Henry Gibson as Dr. Verringer. When he confronts Roger at a beach party and savagely slaps him, demanding payment of his money, one expects Roger to crush him. He smashes a bottle, but stops and then sheepishly takes the doctor inside to sign a check over to him. And in an uproarious scene, Augustine tries to convince his bandaged girlfriend of his sincerity by telling everyone in the room to take off their clothes. One of his bodyguards is an uncredited Arnold Schwarzenegger, who breaks an actor’s cardinal rule by momentarily looking directly at the camera when he starts to strip. One more brilliant moment: when Roger drowns himself in the ocean surf, Marlowe removes his tie before swimming out to try and save him. The family dog, an obnoxious doberman, also swims out and saves his master’s walking stick! 

The Long Goodbye is one of overrated Altman’s best films, whose métier was – clearly – satire. He took a piece of classic noir and punched it so broadly out of proportion that it was barely recognizable. The last moments of the film, however, show us a Marlowe completely out of character, yet completely convincing. Stanley Kauffmann recognized the resemblance of the final shot with that of The Third Man, when Anna (Alida Valli) walks straight past the waiting Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten). I thought Altman's version was beautiful because this time it's Holly Martins (Marlowe) who walks past Anna (Eileen Wade) on the dusty road.