25th Hall of Fame

The Long Goodbye, a fun watch at times thanks to Elliot Gould's 'I don't care' attitude, that he in-vibes into the often portrayed Philip Marlowe. But it's the 'let's party' Robert Altman's directorial style that takes a would be noir and turns it into a big budget version of a student film.

One can't call Elliot Gould's performance as acting in the traditional sense. Though there's no denying he has enough anti-establishment air about him to make his wise cracking lines be the highlight of the film.

Perhaps if Altman wasn't so relaxed about his movie making duties as a director he wouldn't have allowed so many improvised scenes. Those improvisations sometimes work to the film's advantage. But other times like the third scene where veteran actor Sterling Hayden plays a drunk, by actually being drunk and stoned, we get a sloppy performance where a stupor Sterling constantly forgets his cues and blows his lines. It would be wrong to blame Mr Hayden for that mess, the credit albeit a dour one goes to the director who likes to shoot film stock but has a hard time buckling down and keeping to a vision.

That lack of directorial vision shows up in the wild tonal shifts that plaque the production. The acting ranges from ecliptic but suitable (Gould) to downright horrible. Much of the time the movie felt like an old TV episode of Starsky and Hutch complete with cool detectives, a cool car and zany over the top bad guys all set in a cartoon caper.

And what's with the women in this so called noir? All the younger woman act like brainless manikins. The would-be femme fatale (Nina van Pallandt) can't act and is played as a helpless character who can't find her way out of a paper bag. And do I really need to mention Bambi and her 3 friends who live across from Marlowe and are as clueless as the movie's plot is?

Like I said a fun watch, but I wish the film's director had staid more focused.

You made some great points, my man. Altman's film was a good example of some of the foolishness that was going on in the early '70s, exceeded only by some of the Limburger that we see today.

The film had its moments, but the chief problem was that Gould made a terrible Marlowe. In fact of the 7 or so U.S. Chandler/Marlowe films, Gould definitely is anchored at the very bottom. Even though Marlowe is a complex character, my guess is that Gould has the chops to bring off a good portrayal, but he would need better writing and better direction.

To me The Long Goodbye was a missed opportunity, and sits as a mere curio from the late Hippie era.

La Vérité is a courtroom drama centred around the clashing morals of two generations. A young woman's sexual liberation is just as much on trial as the alleged murder of her ex-boyfriend, with a jury not of her peers, but older men ready to allow her promiscuity to dictate their perception of her character. I found both the legal proceedings themselves as well as the flashbacks of Dominique's life to be quite engaging, and the runtime seemed to just fly by.

Warning: potential spoilers below.

It's interesting how my opinion of certain characters changed over the course of the film. I did not like Dominique's entitled attitude at the start, but by the end I was quite sympathetic towards her. On the flipside, Gilbert seemed like a sensible young man in the beginning, and I felt bad for him waiting on Dominique, but he quickly became a controlling and emotionally abusive partner who I despised. This shift is clearly intended to occur as the story unfolds, but for some reason that's not the route I expected the film to take, so I was pleasantly surprised by it.

Dominique's final outburst to the court, where she refused to come to terms with what her relationship with Gilbert truly was, had quite the emotional impact. But what I really loved about the film was the unceremonious ending to the case. Everyone quickly dispersed and things went back to normal once they heard the news, which was pretty telling about how insignificant Dominique and her plight were to the community at large.