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The Long Goodbye
(1973)
The Long Goodbye is a film about private investigator Philip Marlowe, who gets in trouble after helping out a friend. Elliot Gould’s performance of Philip Marlowe carried this film. He manages to make the character seem as someone who is cool, which is difficult for someone who starts the film by driving to a store in the middle of the night just to make his cat happy. He achieves this by playing Philip Marlowe as someone who stays confident enough to joke in situations where you’d expect him to be scared. The supporting performances were good too, especially Sterling Hayden's, who played the role of the alcoholic writer Roger Wade convincingly.
My favorite parts of this film were the scenes between Philip Marlowe and the police, the scenes with Philip Marlowe and Marty Augustine and his group and the scenes with Harry, one of Marty Augustine's helpers. Philip's jokes and the fact that he made it seem like he wasn’t impressed at all with so much confidence was very funny to me in these parts. On the other hand, The subplot with the Wades and Dr. Verringer didn't make a lot of sense to me while I was watching and although most of it got clearer throughout the film, I'm still not entirely sure how relevant Dr. Verringer was to the story.
I can think of many cases where a film's ending made me feel a lot worse about the film as a whole, but not that many where the opposite is true. The Long Goodbye, however, is an exception. I did not expect the ending to go down the way it did at all, but when it happened it immediately made me feel a lot better about the entire film.
The long goodbye is a very fun movie, due to the wisecracking main character, with great performances and an, at least to me, surprising ending.
The Long Goodbye
(1973)
The Long Goodbye is a film about private investigator Philip Marlowe, who gets in trouble after helping out a friend. Elliot Gould’s performance of Philip Marlowe carried this film. He manages to make the character seem as someone who is cool, which is difficult for someone who starts the film by driving to a store in the middle of the night just to make his cat happy. He achieves this by playing Philip Marlowe as someone who stays confident enough to joke in situations where you’d expect him to be scared. The supporting performances were good too, especially Sterling Hayden's, who played the role of the alcoholic writer Roger Wade convincingly.
My favorite parts of this film were the scenes between Philip Marlowe and the police, the scenes with Philip Marlowe and Marty Augustine and his group and the scenes with Harry, one of Marty Augustine's helpers. Philip's jokes and the fact that he made it seem like he wasn’t impressed at all with so much confidence was very funny to me in these parts. On the other hand, The subplot with the Wades and Dr. Verringer didn't make a lot of sense to me while I was watching and although most of it got clearer throughout the film, I'm still not entirely sure how relevant Dr. Verringer was to the story.
I can think of many cases where a film's ending made me feel a lot worse about the film as a whole, but not that many where the opposite is true. The Long Goodbye, however, is an exception. I did not expect the ending to go down the way it did at all, but when it happened it immediately made me feel a lot better about the entire film.
The long goodbye is a very fun movie, due to the wisecracking main character, with great performances and an, at least to me, surprising ending.