The Long Goodbye

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• Country: USA
• Year: 1973
• Running time: 112 Minutes

The Long Goodbye attains the quintessence of noir masterpiece by perversely eschewing the conventions of noir. The great cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond’s sun drenched Los Angeles is a gorgeous pastel wonderland and in place of the rat-a-tat one-liners there’s Altman’s signature overlapping dialogue. (Altman started from a script by pulp legend Leigh Brackett who along with William Faulkner penned the screenplay for The Big Sleep.) And then there’s the surprise of Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s private-eye hero. “The most improbably faithful screen adaptation of Chandler ever made. Altman’s Finest!”– Bruce Bennett, The New York Sun

“The Long Goodbye is neither a homage nor a deconstruction, though it contains elements of both. It's a film about transience, about the awful fragility of the things we want to think are built to last: friendships, marriages, faiths of all kinds—including the faith that pop culture can sometimes makes us feel in powerful fantasy figures like Marlowe and his jaunty, street-smart, superbly incorruptible ilk. –Terrance Rafferty, The New York Times