Capital Celluloid 2023 — Day 169: Sun June 18

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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