The movies got around to adapting Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels fairly early. The first in the series, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939 followed fairly quickly by Farewell, My Lovely, The High Window and The Lady In The Lake and by 1947 all four had been filmed - twice each in the case of the latter two. By common consensus George Montgomery was the worst Marlowe and the film in which he took the role, The High Window the worst adaptation. That held good until Robert Altman decided he was qualified to reinvent Chandler and Boy! did he get a wrong number. I can't name one single aspect that says 'Chandler' in this piece of crap. Elliot Gould resembles Chandler's Philip Marlowe a tad less than Tom Cruise resembles Shakespeare's King Lear. Not that this is necessarily Gould's fault. Presumably he played the role as directed just as equally presumably Leigh Brackett - who had, of course, co-written the screenplay for the Bogie/Hawks version of The Big Sleep - wrote this Marlowe as instructed by Altman. I don't object to any director for whatever reason making a travesty of an accepted genre but I do object when a director acquires the rights of a well-known, well-loved novel and throws out virtually everything that made it great in the first place. Why not simply write and/or commission an Original Screenplay and have done with it. This Marlowe is phony from shot #1. Clearly inspired by Paul Newman's Harper, who was shown as a slob from the off, this Marlowe is portrayed hungover, chain-smoking and living in something one level up from a rat hole. Chandler's Marlowe on the other hand always maintained a tidy apartment and cooked real meals. It's a small point I agree but, as John O'Hara once said if you get the small things right you'll get the big things right. The very first line of the novel reads: The first time I saw Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls Royce outside the Players restaurant. From this Chandler explores the growing friendship between the two men. Here, Lennox turns up at Marlowe's apartment out of the blue about two reels in, displaying nothing of the breeding and raffish charm that made Marlowe invest time in him. The link between Lennox and the Wades is clumsy and inept here where it was subtle in the novel. Lennox' military past in which he was one of three men on a wartime mission is omitted and a gangster who wasn't in the book is substituted for the two that were. Neither is there any mention of Lennox' father-in-law, Harlan Potter, to say nothing of his other daughter who Marlowe would actually marry in a later novel. The final insult is, of course, to have Marlowe, conceived and written as a modern day knight, doing his best to right the world's wrongs, kill Lennox in cold blood. The sooner this is turned into banjo pics the better.
Review of The Long Goodbye
