L.A. Noir: The Long Goodbye
September 24, 2025
L.A. Noir: Shadows in Paradise
Presented by Greg Olson Productions
Master noir novelist Raymond Chandler’s 1953 "The Long Goodbye" was taut, crisp, hard-boiled. Robert Altman’s film version is meandering and woozy from too much laid back sunshine and hash brownies baked by naked female yoga devotees. Times change. Elliott Gould’s bedraggled, bumbling Philip Marlowe is the anti-Bogart version of the character. No questing urban knight off to rendezvous with Lauren Bacall, Gould is having trouble buying cat food after midnight. Antagonized and victimized by a corrupt and confusing world, he responds with a who cares, go with the flow mantra: “It’s okay with me.” When the film came out Altman was criticized for cynically subverting Chandler’s art, but, at heart, he and Gould’s Marlowe do care. Appearances can deceive, and just as Altman layers his film with glass surfaces that reflect, obscure, and reveal shifting realities, Gould’s shambling form hides a classic Marlowe integrity that will spark into action.
Individual Tickets: $15
Passes: $109 | $91 SIFF SAM, Swedish Club, UW Cinema Studies, NWFF, SFI, TheFilmSchool, Festa Italiana, Alliance Francaise de Seattle, Scarecrow Video, & KING FM members
SIFF year-round passes and vouchers are not valid for this screening.
Tickets
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Wednesday, September 24, 2025
- Director: Robert Altman
- Principal Cast: Elliott Gould, Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Mark Rydell, Henry Gibson
- Country: USA
- Year: 1973
- Running Time: 112 min.
- Producer: Jerry Bick
- Screenplay: Leigh Brackett, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler
- Cinematographers: Vilmos Zsigmond
- Editors: Lou Lombardo
- Music: John Williams