The Long Goodbye

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Leigh Brackett

Based on the novel by Raymond Chandler

Director: Robert Altman

Cast: Elliott Gould, Sterling Hayden, Nina van Pallandt

Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond

Music: John Williams

Studio: United Artists

Release: March 7, 1973

“The Long Goodbye” was famously misunderstood by critics during its initial release, but with the deification of director Robert Altman over the next several decades, the film has improved in reputation significantly… to the point where it is now generally considered one of the masterpieces of film noir. And now that I’ve covered Hitchcock, it (along with “In Cold Blood”) is by far the most requested film I’ve received from the readers of this Web site. I wanted to take my time with the film – viewing it three times before I got my thoughts together – because the honest truth is that this is a movie I respect more than I love. If I’m being very honest, I struggle with it.

Now I don’t struggle with it in the same way I struggle with other adored classics like “Touch of Evil.” I think that “The Long Goodbye” is an excellent film and I enjoyed viewing it… my frustration comes from the fact that it is almost a masterpiece to me, but one thing keeps me from surrendering fully to its spell.

But first, let’s talk story.

Our hero is Philip Marlowe (Elliot Gould), transported to 1970s Los Angeles but retaining all the ticks and mannerisms of a classic 1950s private dick, including an awesome vintage car. He seems adrift in the world of hippies and hash brownies, and when his friend Terry (Jim Bouton) asks for help, Marlowe gives it, no questions asked. But soon, Terry’s wife is murdered and Terry is the prime suspect… until he is found dead by suicide in Mexico. Connected somehow is a briefcase full of money, a $5000 bill and a crazy, reclusive novelist named Roger (Sterling Hayden) who might be held hostage at a mental health resort.

How do these disparate threads overlap and connect? Well, if you have the faintest knowledge of novelist Raymond Chandler, whose book serves as the loose basis for the screenplay by Leigh Brackett, then you know the answer is “probably not well.” His stories are all about the atmosphere. The characters. And, of course, the dialogue.

Now, I love what Brackett and Altman’s thesis for the film is… and adore how they transplant the private detective caricature into a modern atmosphere to showcase what is different – and the same – about the differing eras of the detective story. Hell, Altman is so into this idea that every note of John Williams’ score are different variations of the title song penned by Williams and Johnny Mercer. We also hear probably eight versions of the song in the film itself. One work… one idea… one character translated in a hundred different ways. And, for the most part, the movie succeeds in this. Perhaps the most famous scene is Marlowe standing in the sand on a beach, awkward and unsteady but trying to find his place. That sums up the film and the experience perfectly.

My issue with the film comes in the choice to use the Marlowe character at all. Altman famously didn’t read the original novel and Brackett’s screenplay was a loose adaptation to begin with… but I can’t help but wish they had stayed truer to the character. I totally understand why he was chosen for this type of reinterpretation – he’s the most iconic character from ‘40s noir for good reason. Brackett was clearly hired because she co-wrote the original “The Big Sleep” adaptation with Ernest Hemingway… the character of Roger here is obviously based on him (and Hayden was hired because of his connection to those golden age films noir).

(I’m going to make a small detour here just to sing Brackett’s praises. She is low-key one of the greatest screenwriters ever – having written this, the aforementioned “The Big Sleep,” “Rio Bravo” and “The Empire Strikes Back,” among others. Her name should be spoken in the same breath as Sorkin, Lehman, Mamet and more. Now back to your regularly scheduled program.)

But the filmmakers seem more intent on stripping down the simple idea of the private detective, not Marlowe himself. Instead, he is portrayed haphazardly throughout. He makes a grand first impact while searching for a specific brand of food for his picky cat. But later he seems completely idiotic in scenes where he does not need to – not acting dumb so people assume less of him, but truly struggling to find the thread. This makes the few direct quotes from Chandler’s original novel stick out like sore thumbs because they do not match the tone of the rest of the dialogue. And Marlowe’s climactic murder of his best friend, which underlines thematically that even the most honest man in a sea of scorpions will ultimately become one of them, doesn’t land with the bang it needs to because he hasn’t been portrayed in a normalized manner for the entire movie.

Why not just take the extra effort to make Marlowe completely identifiable to big fans of Chandler, that way the finale is more impactful? Or at least make his characterization steady throughout? I’m fine with the myriad of changes the filmmakers make to the original novel, and as readers know I am not a Chandler loyalist… but I just feel like this was a missed opportunity. Specifics would have been much better served here than generalities.

Ah well… so much else is perfect that it’s hard to remain focused on that for long. This may well be Altman’s most visually stunning film – his collaboration with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (“Obsession,” “The Black Dahlia”) is extraordinary. They love to find layers within layers in their set-ups – early when Marlowe is thrown into a holding cell and later in that famous beach shot that doubles for a conversation between Roger and his wife (Nina van Pallandt, who is so good that I feel bad not spending more time praising her). It’s the kind of movie you need to watch two or three times in order to drink in all the details, so I’m very happy that I did.

“The Long Goodbye” is a good film – I have no qualms about that. It may, in fact, be a great film… and one day I’ll get over my hang-up about Marlowe’s characterization. It’s essential noir, but not the first noir movie you should track down. It rewards the viewer who has stood in the shadows with the private dicks, femme fatales and heavies for decades and knows his way around the darkness.

Score: ****1/2

The Eyes of Laura Mars

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: John Carpenter and David Zelag Goodman

Story: John Carpenter

Director: Irvin Kershner

Cast: Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Rene Auberjonois

Cinematography: Victor J. Kemper

Music: Artie Kane

Studio: Columbia Pictures

Release: August 2, 1978

“The Eyes of Laura Mars” purports to be a modern mix of the noir genre mixed with the over-the-top giallo horror subgenre… but succeeds at neither. The stars and creators of this movie are a baffling mix of names that you would never think to place together in the same project: stars Faye Dunaway (“Chinatown”) and Tommy Lee Jones (“No Country for Old Men”), director Irvin Kershner (“The Empire Strikes Back”) and writers John Carpenter (“Halloween”) & David Zelag Goodman (“Farewell, My Lovely”). And turns out there’s a reason you’d think that – they don’t work well together. I’ve enjoyed all their work separately, but together? This is a nightmare… and not in a fun way.

Dunaway plays the title character of Laura Mars, a photographer famous (or infamous) for combining eroticism, violence and fashion in her art. She’s controversial, and one day begins to have visions of a murderer brutally killing those close to her… she experiences the violence as it happens, as if it’s being livestreamed through her eyes. A detective named John (Jones) is put on the case and, though Laura is acting cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, immediately begins romancing her. But who could the killer be? Is it Laura’s ex husband (Raul Julia)? Her bestie and manager (Rene Auberjonois)? Her ex-con driver who sounds a lot like Chucky (Brad Dourif)?

Chances are you’ll figure out who the killer is within the first three minutes of his introduction, and then the movie will become a waiting game as you watch Laura’s friends and suspects get hacked away, one after the other, until the murderer finally sets his sights (heh) on Laura herself. So, as a mystery, there isn’t much there there.

As a horror film, it does little to nothing with the concept of Laura’s visions. In probably the best scene of the film, Laura shows John how her visions work through the use of a television camera and a CCTV… but then the film doesn’t play by the internal logic it sets up for itself. If it entirely blocks out her vision, how does Laura drive her car through the busy streets of New York City later? Sure, she dents and dings her car… but that’s par for the course if you are driving through downtown Manhattan at night. The placement of Laura’s visions when she herself is being attacked at the finale comes off more humorous than suspenseful as well, which is never a good sign.

But then again, it’s hard not to be frustrated enough with Laura’s character that you don’t give a damn about her fate. Girl is rough to be around in the best of circumstances, and you find yourself screaming helpful advice at the screen – only to see her do the opposite of whatever you wanted seconds later. She’s a dumb heroine, simple as that… and Dunaway is completely adrift here. Don’t get me wrong, she is an amazing actress and only four years removed from her iconic role in “Chinatown” and two years removed from winning an Oscar for “Network,” but you would never know it from her work here. She dials it up to 11. She looks for the nearest piece of scenery and begins chewing immediately. Whatever other parallel you want me to draw… she does it. It’s almost painful to watch in places – though I frankly don’t blame her entirely because the character is such a dud that there wasn’t much she could do with it.

The rest of the cast is filled with excellent character actors giving performances that do not meet their usual standard of excellence. Jones unsurprisingly has zero chemistry with Dunaway and looks angry to be involved with the production… and not in his usual charmingly angry way. Dourif does his best to seem like a good red herring. Auberjonois does his best to not allow his character to be a terrible gay stereotype. Julia walks into the movie briefly, sees how hysterical Dunaway’s performance is, and all but says “Hold my beer.”

Legend (and Wikipedia) states that George Lucas was so impressed with the film that he hired Kershner to direct “The Empire Strikes Back” after seeing it. I cannot find another source for this aside from a questionable YouTube video that’s linked on the Wikipedia page, so I suspect it’s not true. But if it was, I have to wonder what kind of drugs Lucas was smoking… and where I can find some. Kershner does some interesting avant garde things with the first act of the movie (which begin with the main titles), but has no idea how to pace his suspense sequences… and his visual indicators of the visions hitting Laura are lame at best.

This is one of those movies where I’m at an absolute loss on how to even approach it. I have no idea what it wanted to get across thematically, could care less about the see-through mystery aspects and actively detest nearly all the characters. Every single above-the-line person from the cast and crew has created wonderful films and television shows separate from this train wreck, and my hope for you is that you go check out those productions and avoid this one.

Score: *

Psycho

The Film Noir Odyssey/The AFI Top 100 Odyssey

AFI Top 100 Ranking: 14

Writer: Joseph Stefano

Based on the novel by Robert Bloch

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, Janet Leigh, John Gavin

Cinematography: John L. Russell

Music: Bernard Herrmann

Studio: Paramount

Release: June 16, 1960

Awards: Hitchcock was nominated for Best Director but lost to Billy Wilder for “The Apartment.” Leigh was nominated for Best Supporting Actress but lost to Shirley Jones for “Elmer Gantry.” The Film lost Best Black-and-White Cinematography to “Sons and Lovers” and Best Black-and-White Art Direction to “The Apartment.”

Like the character of Norman Bates, “Psycho” is split into two pieces, one more dominant than the other. The first is a crime noir starring Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, a broke secretary who steals $40,000 in order to start a new life with her boyfriend. The second is a dark and twisted horror film about Norman (Anthony Perkins), who just wants to be left alone and spend some time with Mother. On the surface, neither feels like a usual Alfred Hitchcock movie, and because of that, the film consistently surprises.

Let’s concentrate on the first piece, shall we? Screenwriter Joseph Stefano creates an internal monologue for Marion as she drives her newly-purchased getaway car. She’s a likeable heroine and we believe that her love for her boyfriend Sam (John Gavin) is what drives her to theft, not the thrill of it all. There are the usual complications: Marion spies the boss she stole the money from as she high-tales it out of town, an inquisitive cop just won’t stop following her, etc. It’s all well done, and Marion is an interesting character, but isn’t it all a bit… just okay? The story feels like a noir, and yet Hitchcock is resisting the shadows, instead embracing long shots of landscapes and keeping things mostly in daylight. Watching the movie again, I was struck at just how different the first forty minutes are so from everything that follows and how elegant Hitchcock was at setting up red-herrings that seem like they’ll be so important later (putting the money in the newspaper, the nosey police officer).

The movie begins to transition the moment the first raindrop hits Marion’s windshield. In fact, all three major turning points for the narrative (the storm, the shower and the swamp) are marked by water. No more inner monologue, no more long shots of the landscape…just shadows. I’ve seen the movie a dozen times and the site of that monstrosity of a house staring down at the cheap-looking Bates Motel still gives me the creeps. It looks like the kind of place where you wear shower shoes and sleep on top of the covers. Part of it is that the film is shot in black-and-white, leaving the sky behind the house always gray and foreboding. We feel off-kilter seeing Marion in a place that doesn’t suit what we’ve seen before, but her calm as the strange becomes more ever-present assures the viewer that all will be okay.

Even when that house and the Bates’ secrets are known, the movie still works. You begin to appreciate the smart writing and Perkins’ performance still gets under your skin. He just doesn’t seem…right. In the scene where Marion and Norman talk in that stuffed bird-filled parlor, you begin to notice all the small ways Stefano was setting up the upcoming transition to Norman’s point-of-view. It’s so subtle and well-done that I forgave him for giving Marion the last name “Crane” and then putting her in a room with a bunch of dead birds.

After the fantastic murder scene in the shower, which proves that just a trickle of blood can be as unnerving as several feet of small intestine, the scene of Norman cleaning up the body and blood seem endless…and yet you can’t look away. For audiences seeing the movie for the first time, the minutes are spent to let the shock sink in, but for repeat viewers there are neat little moments of tension built in that you don’t notice right away, such as when Norman almost leaves the paper or when the car almost doesn’t sink into the swamp.

In fact, there are just so many small things that end up mattering so much which you just don’t pick up on the first or even second viewing. Vera Miles, who plays Marion’s sister Lila, has a purposely strong first moment onscreen where she shouts at Sam, as if to wave her hands in front of the audience and alert them that she’s the new girl in town who we should pay attention to. When Norman carries his Mother down to the fruit cellar, Stefano made sure to put in a line where the Mother shouts “I can walk myself!” to ensure viewers don’t think she’s too incapacitated to do the killings. Visually, I can never get enough of that single frame of a skull on top of Norman’s face in his final scene.

Miles and Leigh are both serviceable and quite sympathetic as (relatively) interchangeable heroines, but the real star here is Perkins. There isn’t a moment where he seems at peace on camera. Even sitting, he’s in constant movement, whether fiddling or chewing or darting his eyes from here to there. And yet there’s something we like about Norman, and when he’s cleaning up Marion’s blood and naked body, we don’t hate him. It’s pity, of course, but enough of a bond with the viewer for us to not want him to end up just another victim of Mother’s machinations.

There is one fairly huge flaw in all of this fun, mayhem and blood, and that is the closing sequence. “Psycho” should have ended with Sam wrestling with Norman in the fruit cellar, but Stefano and Hitchcock instead add in a needless explanatory scene to wrap things up. Some random dude explains every plot set-up and pay-off with little or no inflection even though even the slowest viewers could figure it out. The tension is gone, and by the time we visit Norman in that cell it’s almost too late.

This section also underlines the more problematic stuff in the movie, which has aged quite poorly. After I wrote my article on Hitchcock’s “Rope,” a film in which two gay dudes kill a guy and then stuff his body in a trunk and serve dinner on it, I received some feedback taking me to task for not taking the filmmakers to task (whew) for making their villains so overtly gay. But that never bugged me, and I write that as a gay man – I’m fine with villains being gay as long as they are complex, which they were. Same thing with Mrs. Danvers in “Rebecca.” But here, the questionable content feels more like a trick, and therefore cheaper. As a result, it grates today in an unfortunate way.

That said, there’s so much here to love, from Bernard Herrmann’s best score (sorry, “Cape Fear” and “Vertigo”) to those fantastic titles by Saul Bass that perfectly set up the mood of both the mini-films that follow.

“Psycho” is an elegant thriller, but also one that remains just as entertaining after its secrets are revealed. The shock value of a first viewing can’t really exist anymore—the movie’s twists are too engrained in pop culture, but there is still so much to love. Stefano and Hitchcock took the time the paint in the edges and make sure they were playing fair with an audience who would be eager to ensure that they did.

After this, there would be no more noir for Hitchcock, which brings us to the end of our little mini-Odyssey into his work. It’s also his final real high point as a filmmaker – “The Birds” has many moments of brilliant suspense lost in a mass of boring character work that lands with a thud. Despite critics trying to re-evaluate “Marnie” as a lost masterpiece, it continues to suck and I can’t watch it without feeling sick knowing what Tippi Hedren went through while making it (Also the hero rapes the heroine and they are still supposed to have a happy ending? What the actual fuck?). The rest of the films are diminishing returns, though “Family Plot” at least offers up a fun finale to his career, minor as it may be. I idolized the man growing up, so rewatching many of these films for the first time in over a decade has been a sobering, interesting experience. Certainly many masterpieces, but also a lot of movies that fundamentally don’t work for a myriad of reasons. Odd, isn’t it? Growing up to learn your childhood heroes were creeps and that the work you adored more than anything can be as imperfect as the man who created it. I wish I had some awesome thesis to wrap things up or new insights I got into the legend and the man behind the legend. But I guess all I have is that life and art are fucking messy… which is nothing new but somehow fitting considering I’m writing articles about film noir.

Score: ****1/2

The Wrong Man

The Film Noir Odyssey

Writer: Maxwell Anderson and Angus MacPhail

Based on the news article by Anderson

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Cast: Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, Anthony Quayle

Cinematography: Robert Burks

Music: Bernard Herrmann

Studio Warner Bros.

Release: December 22, 1956

During his AFI Lifetime Achievement Award acceptance speech, director Alfred Hitchcock recounted his most oft-told tale – when growing up, his parents paid a police officer to lock him in a jail cell for several minutes in order to teach him a lesson. Everyone with even a passing interest in him knows the story, and that experience was so scarring to him that it has become the most clear thematic throughline for his entire career. From “The Lodger” all the way to his penultimate film “Frenzy,” Hitchcock explored the idea time and time again, though never as explicitly as he did with “The Wrong Man.”

This film is not a thriller and offers none of the suspense we usually get from a Hitchcock film. Instead, it is a waking nightmare, with a few simple coincidences resulting in a man being thrown into hell. It’s the classic Kafka narrative for “The Trial,” except that this is based on a true story. And, of all the films within Hitchcock’s oeuvre, it has aged the best in its exploration of the faults of law enforcement, though today our hero would be a minority.

Henry Fonda stars as Manny, a musician in New York City who is surviving-but-not-prospering with his wife Rose (Vera Miles) and their two sons. Rose needs expensive dental surgery so Manny heads into a bank to get a loan off her life insurance… but several clerks there mistake him for the man who held the bank up at gunpoint several weeks prior. Soon Manny is arrested, and no matter how he protests or what he says, he appears more and more guilty. The stress causes Rose to have a nervous breakdown, and Manny finds himself a lost soul within the cogs of the broken justice system.

I can see why the film wasn’t well-received upon its release – audiences wanted the usual Hitchcock formula. It has grown in stature since then, and rightly so. There’s this incredible moment after Manny is booked where he sits alone in his tiny cell. Fonda’s face goes blank, unable to process what is happening, and the camera begins to move in a circle… unlatching the character from reality as his world spins uncontrollably around him. It’s one of the most explicit thematic visual statements Hitchcock ever made, and also a moment any viewer will ever forget. Shockingly, the moment is almost matched later when the screen freezes on Manny’s face and he slowly… oh so slowly… fades away while the real criminal approaches frame and, for just a few seconds, the two faces exist within the same space. You can’t help but getting goosebumps.

Screenwriters Maxwell Anderson, who wrote the article upon which the film is based, and Angus MacPhail (“Spellbound”) do incredibly well with Manny considering that he must remain passive for most of the film. He has to go with the police. He has to do what they tell him. He has to let the lawyer do the talking for him. He has to commit his wife to a mental hospital. He has no choice in these matters. They do give him a few active things to do, like tracking down witnesses who may have seen him the day of the robbery… but these are the exceptions. And even though they take pains to paint him as perhaps a little too much of a perfect husband and father at the beginning, they do an excellent job within scenes of underlining Manny’s frustration and anger at what is happening to him, even if he is impotent to change the results. Fonda is well cast here… he always does well as an everyman and this is no exception.

I wish I could be as enthusiastic about Miles, whose performance is the biggest problem with the movie, and it is quite glaring. To be fair, Rose is a difficult character to play, and the writers don’t do her many favors by making her descent into madness so sudden and all-encompassing. But even with that said, she ain’t great. I don’t buy her early scenes of domestic bliss – she has zero chemistry with Fonda and appears to be acting throughout. And then the more unhinged work is just… uh… not good.

Hitchcock had been working in color for almost a decade when this film was produced, and the choice to switch back to black-and-white was brilliant. Composer Bernard Herrmann’s music is pulled back as well – aside from its early jazzy prologue over the credits, it barely registers, which is the smart choice. Allowing the film to feel gritty… to feel cheap in places… to allow the viewer to feel unmoored without music… it allows the more expressionistic moments like the ones listed above to really land with the impact they need.

While I find myself hedging my bets with many of these Hitchcock movies on whether or not they truly work as film noir, “The Wrong Man” feels like it belongs here. Despite no femme fatale or soulless hero, it works well within the shadows of the genre. It’s very good too, but you’ll enjoy it more the less you try to approach it like a normal movie from the Master of Suspense.

Score: ****