***Out in the 1950s Crime Noir Night –Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

The Long Goodbye, starring Eliot Gould, directed by Robert Altman, MGM, 1971, from Raymond Chandler’s crime novel of the same name

Although this is a film adaptation of a Raymond Chandler Philip Marlowe crime novel you would be hard pressed to understand the film character without some background about Chandler, and about Marlowe. Like I said in another review he, along with Brother Dashiell Hammett turned the dreary gentile drawing-room sleuth by-the-numbers crime novels that dominated the reading market back in the day, back before the 1930s when they made a splash on the scene, on its head and gave us tough guy blood and guts detectives we could admire, could get behind, warts and all. Thanks, guys.

[Hammett, the author of The Thin Man, and creator of The Maltese Falcon’s Sam Spade, maybe the most famous tough guy detective of them all. Sam, who come to think of it like Marlowe, also had a judgment problem when it came to women, women wearing that damn perfume that stops a man, even a hard-boiled detective man cold, although not an assortment of Hollywood women but one, one dame who had him all twisted up, almost, up north in Frisco town.]

In Chandler’s case he drew strength from his startling use of language to describe Marlowe’s environment much in the way a detective would use his heightened powers of observation during an investigation, missing nothing. Marlowe was able to size up, let’s say, a sizzling blonde, as a statuesque, full-bodied and ravishing dame and then pick her apart as nothing but a low-rent gold-digger. Of course that never stopped him from taking a run at one or two of them himself and then sending them off into the night, or to the clink, to fend for themselves. He also knew how to blow off a small time chiseler, a grifter, as so much flamboyance and hot air not neglecting to notice that said grifter had moisture above his upper lip indicating that he stood in fear of something if only his shadow as he attempted to pull some caper, or tried to pull the wool over Marlowe’s eyes. Or noticing a frayed collar or a misshapen dress that indicated that a guy or gal was on cheap street and just maybe not on the level, maybe scratching like crazy for his or her coffee and cakes.

The list of such descriptive language goes on and on -sullen bartenders wiping a random whisky glass, flighty chorus girls arm in arm with wrong gee gangsters, Hollywood starlet wannabes displaying their wares a little too openly, old time geezers, toothless, melting away in some thankless no account job, guys working out of small-time airless no front cheap jack offices in rundown buildings on the wrong side of town doing, well, doing the best they can. And cops, good cops, bad cops, all with that cop air about them of seen it all, done it all blasé, and by the way spill your guts before the billy- club comes down on your fragile head. (That spill your guts thing, by the way a trait that our Marlowe seems organically incapable of doing, except when it suited his purposes. No cop or gangster could force anything out of him, and they tried, believe me they tried. ) He had come from them, from the cops, from the D.A.s office in the old days, had worked with them on plenty of cases but generally he tried to treat them like one might a snake not quite sure whether it is poisonous or not.

At the same time Chandler was a master of setting the details of the space Marlowe had to work in- the high hill mansions and the back alley rooming houses (although usually not the burgeoning ranchero middle class locales since apparently that segment of society has not need of his services and therefore no need of a description of their endless sameness and faux gentility). He had a fix on the museum-like quality of the big houses, the places like General Sternwood’s in The Big Sleep or Mrs. Murdock’s in The High Windowreflecting old wealth California. And he has a razor sharp sense of the arrivisite, the new blood all splash and glitter, all high-ceiling bungalow, swimming pools, and landscaped gardens.

But where Chandler made his mark was in his descriptions of the gentile seedy places, the mansions of old time Los Angeles Bunker Hill turned to rooming houses with that faint smell of urine, that strong smell of liquor, that loud noise that comes with people living too close together, too close to breath their simple dreams. Or the descriptions of the back alley offices in the rundown buildings that had seen better days populated by the failed dentists, the sly repo men, the penny-ante insurance brokers, the con artists, the flotsam and jetsam of the losers in the great American West night just trying to hang on from rent payment to rent payment. Those denizens of these quarters usually had a walk on role, or wound up with two slugs to the head, but Chandler knew the type, had the type down solid.

Nor was Chandler above putting a little social commentary in Marlowe’s mouth. Reflections on such topics as that very real change after World War II in the kind of swarms that were heading west to populate the American Western shore night. The rise of the corner boys hanging, just hanging, around blasted storefronts, a few breaking off into the cranked up hot rod hell’s highway night. The restless mobsters for broken back east looking to bake out in the southern California sun while taking over the vast crime markets. The wannabe starlets ready to settle for less than stardom for the right price. The old California money (the gold rush, gold coast, golden era money) befuddled by the all new waves coming in. And above all a strong sense of the rootlessness, the living in the moment, the grabbing while the grabbing was good mentality that offended old Marlowe’s code of honor.

And of course over a series of books Chandler expanded the Marlowe character, expanded his range of emotions, detailed his growing world-weariness, his growing wariness, his small compromises with that code of honor that he had honed back in the 1930s. Yes, Marlowe the loner, the avenging angel , the righter of wrongs, maybe little wrongs but wrongs in this wicked old world. The guy who sometimes had to dig deep in his office desk drawer to grab a shot or six of whiskey to help him think things through. Marlowe the guy of a thousand punches, the guy of a hundred knocks on the head, the guy who had taken a more than one slug for the cause, the guy who was every insurance company’s nightmare and a guy who could have used some serious Obamacare health insurance no questions asked . Yah, Marlowe.

And so we come to this Robert Altman film adaption of Chandler’s late crime novel. Of course over several decades the Marlowe character has been played many ways from the no holds barred tough guy Humphrey Bogart of The Big Sleep to the more upscale Robert Montgomery of The Lady In The Lake to Eliot Gould 1970s California cool, flippant, sarcastic, witty, seen it all, done it all in the film under review. But through the various characterizations that “tilting after windmills,” that sense of honor, that no holds barred sense of getting a little rough justice in this wicked old world shines through. And while the film does not follow the novel closely at all that sense pervaded the film.

Here Marlowe is trying to help an old pal in trouble, Terry Lennox, after he has allegedly brutally murdered his wife, although that was unknown to him at the time. Marlowe takes Terry south to Tijuana to figure things out and then all hell breaks loose on poor Marlowe’s head. He is sent to the slammer by the cops for not co-operating, for not dropping the dime on Terry, spending three days in the cooler for his efforts. Then he is just as quickly released. Reason: Lennox has done everybody a favor and committed suicide. Marlowe isn’t buying, isn’t buying the whole frame story one bit. And then the plot thickens as Marlowe resumes his sleuthing career moving on to try to help a distressed wife find her drunken famous writer husband, Roger Wade.

And Marlowe finds Roger and brings him back his ever-loving wife. End of story, No because Marlowe seems to be a guy who knows too many fragile guys when old Roger winds up washed out to the Japan currents, another suicide. Along the way though that Terry disappearance still bugged him, bugged him even more when a mobster whom Terry worked for as a mule wanted to know what Marlowe knew about a big wad of dough that Terry had in his possession. His dough. The mobster eventually got his dough but that only confirmed that Terry had to still be alive. The bastard. Yes, the bastard, because Terry actually did brutally kill his wife and guess what that old writer’s wife and Terry were lovers.

Here is where the rough justice comes in as Marlowe headed south to dusty old Mexico, found out from the bribed authorities where Terry was holed up and confronted his old friend. Confronted him with a hail of slugs. No, Terry and Mrs. Wade will not get to spend old Wade’s money together and live happily ever after. So yeah Marlowe had his code left intact, and friend or foe better watch out.