Marlowe is caught in a kind of time warp, a dream wherein he wants to move forward, but he's constantly in slow motion.
Like most of Altman's films, this one seems to ramble and meander from beginning to end. At least in the context of a criminal investigation we can see why this might actually be the case in real life. But it gives Altman an excuse to show us Marlowe's responses to a number of people and events that are seemingly contradictory. Living across from the PI's apartment in a complex that looks like a small village is a bevy of young women who scamper merrily on their balcony nude. Marlowe likes them and helps them when he can, but he never makes any advances toward them. He's either a perfect gentleman from a different era or a little tardy on the uptake.
Marlowe's biggest problem when the film opens is what to feed his cat when it wakens him at three in the morning wanting to be fed. Therefore, before the plot even begins, we see Marlowe going to the grocery store, saying hello to his female neighbors, who never seem to sleep, and trying to con his cat into eating a brand of cat food it normally wouldn't touch. It's all kind of charming, actually, if you don't expect a rapid-fire, MTV pace in your films.
Video:
Here's where the real trouble begins. Altman usually plays so many games with the picture and sound in his movies, it's hard to tell whether the cinematography or the transfer are at fault for the results. One of the disc's accompanying featurettes goes into detail about how Altman and his cameraman obtained the desired visual effects, but looking on the film today, the image quality merely seems blurred and rough around the edges. It's also a bit dark and grainy, obscuring some detail in nighttime and indoor shots. I wish I could tell you exactly why Altman wanted a washed-out effect in some scenes and a hazy effect in others, but I cannot. Even in full daylight, the Technicolor picture looks faded, although to its credit the digital transfer retains much of the movie's original Panavision dimensions in a 2.09:1 ratio.
Audio:
The sound is Dolby Digital monaural, and again Altman goofs around so much with microphone placements and pickups and the creation of different sonic environments that it's difficult to tell if there's something wrong with the audio or if that's just the way he wanted it. Sometimes the sound is echoey, sometimes cavernous, sometimes constricted, depending on the director's idea of how realistic voices and noises would appear in various acoustic spaces like small rooms, jail cells, or the wide-open beach. Most of the time, the mono soundtrack is fine, particularly in rendering John Williams' (yes, THE John Williams) jazz-inflected background score with accuracy, but occasionally the dialogue can be hard to decipher. And Gould's penchant for mumbling doesn't help matters.
Extras:
For a non-special edition of an older film, MGM have afforded it a surprising number of bonus items. The first is a newly made, twenty-four-minute featurette titled "Rip Van Marlowe," in which the director and cast members reminisce about and discuss the film, especially the reasons for their updating of Chandler's story. Then, there's a fourteen-minute featurette titled "Vilmos Zsigmond Flashes The Long Goodbye," in which the cinematographer discusses his methods for filming the movie the way he did and why. Following that is an "American Cinematographer" reprint of a 1973 article about the making of the film. This is all useful information to the film buff and entertaining for the casual observer as well. To conclude the package, there are a scant sixteen scene selections, a widescreen theatrical trailer, five radio spots, English and French spoken languages, and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.
Parting Thoughts:
"The Long Goodbye" may not please Chandler purists, but it is an endlessly fascinating movie in any case. Altman easily establishes his theme of allowing a relatively conservative fifties kind of guy to amble his way through the liberated seventies and indirectly comment, largely through his actions and inactions, on what he encounters. If it all seems a bit surrealistic, that's the way it's meant to be. If it doesn't seem to move very fast, that, too, is the way it's meant to be.
Marlowe is caught in a kind of time warp, a dream wherein he wants to move forward, but he's constantly in slow motion. It's like a very long and lingering good-bye to someone (or in Marlowe's case some thing) you don't want to leave. The film is rated R for profanity, brief nudity, and violence.
Marlowe's biggest problem when the film opens is what to feed his cat when it wakens him at three in the morning wanting to be fed. Therefore, before the plot even begins, we see Marlowe going to the grocery store, saying hello to his female neighbors, who never seem to sleep, and trying to con his cat into eating a brand of cat food it normally wouldn't touch. It's all kind of charming, actually, if you don't expect a rapid-fire, MTV pace in your films.
Video:
Here's where the real trouble begins. Altman usually plays so many games with the picture and sound in his movies, it's hard to tell whether the cinematography or the transfer are at fault for the results. One of the disc's accompanying featurettes goes into detail about how Altman and his cameraman obtained the desired visual effects, but looking on the film today, the image quality merely seems blurred and rough around the edges. It's also a bit dark and grainy, obscuring some detail in nighttime and indoor shots. I wish I could tell you exactly why Altman wanted a washed-out effect in some scenes and a hazy effect in others, but I cannot. Even in full daylight, the Technicolor picture looks faded, although to its credit the digital transfer retains much of the movie's original Panavision dimensions in a 2.09:1 ratio.
Audio:
The sound is Dolby Digital monaural, and again Altman goofs around so much with microphone placements and pickups and the creation of different sonic environments that it's difficult to tell if there's something wrong with the audio or if that's just the way he wanted it. Sometimes the sound is echoey, sometimes cavernous, sometimes constricted, depending on the director's idea of how realistic voices and noises would appear in various acoustic spaces like small rooms, jail cells, or the wide-open beach. Most of the time, the mono soundtrack is fine, particularly in rendering John Williams' (yes, THE John Williams) jazz-inflected background score with accuracy, but occasionally the dialogue can be hard to decipher. And Gould's penchant for mumbling doesn't help matters.
Extras:
For a non-special edition of an older film, MGM have afforded it a surprising number of bonus items. The first is a newly made, twenty-four-minute featurette titled "Rip Van Marlowe," in which the director and cast members reminisce about and discuss the film, especially the reasons for their updating of Chandler's story. Then, there's a fourteen-minute featurette titled "Vilmos Zsigmond Flashes The Long Goodbye," in which the cinematographer discusses his methods for filming the movie the way he did and why. Following that is an "American Cinematographer" reprint of a 1973 article about the making of the film. This is all useful information to the film buff and entertaining for the casual observer as well. To conclude the package, there are a scant sixteen scene selections, a widescreen theatrical trailer, five radio spots, English and French spoken languages, and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.
Parting Thoughts:
"The Long Goodbye" may not please Chandler purists, but it is an endlessly fascinating movie in any case. Altman easily establishes his theme of allowing a relatively conservative fifties kind of guy to amble his way through the liberated seventies and indirectly comment, largely through his actions and inactions, on what he encounters. If it all seems a bit surrealistic, that's the way it's meant to be. If it doesn't seem to move very fast, that, too, is the way it's meant to be.
Marlowe is caught in a kind of time warp, a dream wherein he wants to move forward, but he's constantly in slow motion. It's like a very long and lingering good-bye to someone (or in Marlowe's case some thing) you don't want to leave. The film is rated R for profanity, brief nudity, and violence.
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[release]10520[/release]