The Long Goodbye (1973): A

Legendary private dick Philip Marlowe gets a ‘70s makeover in Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, a droll, cunning and magnificently woozy adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s final Marlowe mystery. Counterculture über-schlep Elliot Gould transforms the detective from a tough-talking, fast-acting gumshoe into a sloppy, reactive dreamer, but the brilliance of Altman’s film is that it nonetheless maintains the essential essence of its lead character – as in Chandler’s novels, Gould’s Marlowe is a defiant idealist and altruist (whether it’s helping a pal in need or going out to the store at 3 a.m. to buy his hungry cat some food) disgusted by corruption and convinced that there’s some goodness left in sleazy, lousy L.A. Written by The Big Sleep scribe Leigh Brackett, The Long Goodbye is chockablock with plot twists and turns involving a blustery Ernest Hemmingway-type writer (Sterling Hayden), his alluring young wife (Nina Van Pallandt), a loan shark (Mark Rydell), and Marlowe’s friend Terry Lennox (former major leaguer and Ball Four author Jim Bouton) who’s accused of murdering his wife and then killing himself. Altman’s constantly roaming camera and multilayered sound design is as enveloping as a warm blanket, Gould’s seemingly tossed-off (but in fact expertly crafted) performance is a marvel of laidback cool and world-weary charm, and the film’s scintillating portrait of a West Coast – from its Los Angeles high rises to its neighboring Tijuana slums – mired in crime, filth and immorality would have made Chandler proud.