People think of Film Noir and Raymond Chandler together, but make no mistake, Altman's The Long Goodbye is NOT Film Noir. You can't really do Film Noir in color, because the genre is all about things (places, people, loyalties, good & evil) being divided up by hard shadows, and color film has no real hard shadows because the color dyes are transparent.
But where Chandler's Marlowe was the last good man in a corrupt world, Altman's Marlowe is the last sane man in an insane world. That is the translation from the 1940's to the 1970's. And instead of shadows dividing good from evil, Altman has made a film full of sliding, dissolving images and harsh white burn-outs, dissolving the line between sanity and insanity. Instead of Film Noir, it's Film Blanche. The height of this is Sterling Hayden's death scene, which we see through a succession of POV shots and reflections in plate glass doors, until we can't tell for sure what we are seeing, or whose POV it is anymore.
Altman once told me that he shot this movie using "a counter-moving camera." He explained that every time the action was just about to show you something you really wanted to know, the camera turned away.
The movie is delightfully wacky and anarchic. Mark Rydell's performance as the gangster, shocking in its day, probably doesn't have quite the punch it once did because it's been imitated so much.
But overall, this film is a broad and scathing comment on the state of society, and goes a good deal deeper than anything Chandler ever did. Truly not to be missed.
But where Chandler's Marlowe was the last good man in a corrupt world, Altman's Marlowe is the last sane man in an insane world. That is the translation from the 1940's to the 1970's. And instead of shadows dividing good from evil, Altman has made a film full of sliding, dissolving images and harsh white burn-outs, dissolving the line between sanity and insanity. Instead of Film Noir, it's Film Blanche. The height of this is Sterling Hayden's death scene, which we see through a succession of POV shots and reflections in plate glass doors, until we can't tell for sure what we are seeing, or whose POV it is anymore.
Altman once told me that he shot this movie using "a counter-moving camera." He explained that every time the action was just about to show you something you really wanted to know, the camera turned away.
The movie is delightfully wacky and anarchic. Mark Rydell's performance as the gangster, shocking in its day, probably doesn't have quite the punch it once did because it's been imitated so much.
But overall, this film is a broad and scathing comment on the state of society, and goes a good deal deeper than anything Chandler ever did. Truly not to be missed.