The Big Sleep

I thought this film was so much better than The Long Goodbye. More originality, more acting, and it made a whole lot more sense. Although, I did get confused a few times because of how many characters were being followed, I was able to piece the film together and understand what was happening. Great acting by some solid actors. Overall, it was a good film.

The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye was one of the least favorite films.  It was so drawn out and boring.  There were really no interesting characters which made you want to continue watching.  I don't really like Elliot Gould as an actor, he plays his character with such low energy and lacks any kind of enthusiasm.  Boring. Boring.

The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye starring Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe was extremely long, drawn out and not very entertaining. Marlowe's character was drab, and the supposed quick witty remarks were awful. The acting on all parts was not very good at all. The neighbor girls had to there as a poor attempt to get guys to want to watch the film, because they served no other purpose. All and all a film I would never watch again.

The Long Ggoodbye

I liked this movie a lot.  A lot of twists and turns and the ending was very unexpected.  And I didn’t realize how important the cat was in that movie until the end.  I had forgotten how good Elliot Gould was.   I would watch this movie again.  I  thought it was pretty cool that they used the song in many ways throughout the movie. Also, the amount of smoking was crazy especially in the public buildings.    It reminds me how far we have come with our attitude with smoking.   

Some Neo-Noir Recomendations

For those of you who hated "The Long Goodbye", here are some other noirish films that were made after the classic era.  I can't guarantee anything, but they are all quite good and they are streamable on Netflix.

Charley Varrick - 1973

Cutter's Way - 1981

The Man Who Wasn't There - 2001

Thief - 1981 

The Long (Meandering) Goodbye

I watched The Long Goodbye directed by Robert Altman and starring Elliott Gould as famous pulp fiction private detective, Phillip Marlowe.

Like most of Altman's work, I found the movie slow and meandering, with more attention being paid to the incidentals and not enough on the actual art of telling the story. This makes it hard for me to "lose" myself in the film. Instead, I am paying too much attention to that which does not matter including Gould's "stream of consciousness" voice over and the unbelievably poor ADR of the actor's voices in post-production. I do understand that Altman is considered an auteur and I have tried to watch a number of his films but have had the same exact feeling; meandering with no connection to the characters on screen. In fact, I had more of an interest of what happened to Marlowe's cat and if he ever got Courry Brand cat food versus what happened to Terry Lennox or his wife.

I did find it funny that when I Google-searched the word meandering followed by Robert Altman, I came upon a number of articles that refer to his style of direction as such. It was also interesting to note that Terrance Malick is considered to have a similar meandering style. However, what I find to be the major difference is that the way that Malick uses cinematography to tell the story and push it forward so visually, it keeps the viewer engaged. The watching of Marlowe's female neighbors shot voyeuristically seemed for titillation purposes rather than any real intrinsic value to the story.

Farewell Long Goodbye

What a steaming pile of a movie. It not only highlighted everything that was wrong about the early 70's and California, it actually seemed to boast about it. I can't say enough about how bad this movie was. I want my two hours of wasted time back.