The Long Goodbye

Robert Altman reinvents Raymond Chandler's private eye, Philip Marlowe in this revisionist detective story. Elliott Gould gives a strong performance as Marlowe who seems to be lost and confused -- a 1940's private eye wandering through 1973. It's very clever and very Altman-esque. Though to be fair, some of the credit should go to screenwriter Leigh Bracket who also wrote Howard Hawks' great, The Big Sleep. It's often funny and strings together incidents and characters with that improvisatory style that Altman has mastered. Sterling Hayden gives one of his finest performances a drunkard writer, and it's interesting to notice a couple of uncredited cameos by David Carradine and as yet unkown Arnold Schwarzenegger.