Thursday, September 28, 2017

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Director: Robert Altman. Cast: Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Henry Gibson. 112 min. Rated R. Crime/Comedy.

It's film noir, and its main character is Philip Marlowe, so you know even before the story starts rolling, that the female employing our hero's services is criminally complicit in her own qualms, and he's being led into a trap to cover the lady. But that's not the point. The point is how Altman beautifully stylizes what Raymond Chandler, Howard Hawkes and Humphrey Bogart canonized in the 40s into the 70s, ... and the range of emotions Elliot Gould delivers through mere facial expressions. If film noir ever happened in the wacky 70s, this is exactly how it would be.

Trivia: Watch for Arnold as one of the gangster's henchmen!

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