ELLIOTT GOULD IN ROBERT ALTMAN'S NEO NOIR 'THE LONG GOODBYE'

Title: THE LONG GOODBYE Director: Robert Altman Year: 1973 Rating: *****

Former Noir legend Sterling Hayden is technically the most important character in Robert Altman's Neo Noir THE LONG GOODBYE, based on a Raymond Chandler novel where the tough-handsome gumshoe Philip Marlowe is turned into a lazy, hippie-friendly slob in Elliott Gould, perfectly cast against type and at his very best...

Particularly a scene where he and Hayden's Roger Wade... hired by Wade's mesmerizing trophy wife guarded by a grouchy doberman within a Malibu, California colony home... share an afternoon drink at the couple's Malibu beach-backyard, and it's here Wade learns that Marlowe's not such a "ding-a-ling" after all...

Sterling Hayden and Elliott Gould in THE LONG GOODBYE

Like any kind of Film Noir... from trenchcoats to cheap suits, most of the last-name-spouting dialog is meant to put the gumshoe into mazes as puzzling to him as to the audience...

Though the basic plot is simple enough as Marlowe's lifelong buddy supposedly killed himself in Mexico after supposedly killing his wife in Malibu... and to give away any more would be a crime...

Elliott Gould in THE LONG GOODBYE

But what makes director Altman shine behind his actors (including Mark Rydell as a surprisingly vicious gangster and David Arkin as his clumsy henchmen) is that the camera literally never stops moving... 

And yet it hardly seems to noticeably move all that much at all — subtle genius by the spontaneous auteur whose real agenda is to focus on the characters... despite how completely out-of-focus they may initially seem.

Sterling Hayden in THE LONG GOODBYE

Sterling Hayden and Elliott Gould in THE LONG GOODBYE

Elliott Gould in THE LONG GOODBYE

Elliott Gould in THE LONG GOODBYE

Elliott Gould in THE LONG GOODBYE

Jim Bouton in THE LONG GOODBYE

Jerry Jones, Elliott Gould and John Davies in The Long Goodbye

Elliott Gould in THE LONG GOODBYE with Sterling Hayden

Elliott Gould in THE LONG GOODBYE with Nina van Pallandt

David Arkin and Elliott Gould in THE LONG GOODBYE

Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo as a muscular mute goon in The Long Goodbye

David Carradine quick prison cameo in THE LONG GOODBYE

Sterling Hayden as Roger Wade in THE LONG GOODBYE

Poster for THE LONG GOODBYE

Poster for THE LONG GOODBYE

Sybil Scotford and Elliott Gould in THE LONG GOODBYE