The Long Goodbye (Altman, 1973): Prince Charles Cinema, 6pm
This is a 35mm screening.
Time Out review:
Despite
cries of outrage from hard-line Raymond Chandler purists, this is, along with
Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep, easily the most intelligent of all screen
adaptations of the writer's work. Robert Altman in fact stays pretty close to
the novel's basic narrative (though there are a couple of crucial
changes), but where he comes up with something totally original is in
his ironic updating of the story and characters: Philip Gould's Marlowe is a
laid-back, shambling slob who, despite his incessant claim that
everything is 'OK with me,' actually harbours the same honourable ideals
as Chandler's Marlowe; but those values, Altman implies, just don't fit
in with the neurotic, uncaring, ephemeral lifestyle led by the 'Me
Generation' of modern LA. As Marlowe attempts to protect a friend
suspected of battering his wife to death, and gets up to his neck in
blackmail, suicide, betrayal and murder, Altman constructs not only a
comment on the changes in values in America over the last three decades,
but a critique of film noir mythology: references, both ironic and
affectionate, to Chandler (cats and alcoholism) and to earlier
private-eye thrillers abound. Shot in gloriously steely colours by Vilmos Zsigmond with a continually moving camera, wondrously scripted by Leigh Brackett (who worked on The Big Sleep), and superbly acted all round, it's one of the finest movies of the '70s.
Geoff Andrew
Here (and above) is the trailer. Here is the theme tune, sung by Jack Sheldon.
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