The Long Goodbye (1973)

Two things struck me in my latest viewing of Robert Altman’s superb The Long Goodbye (1973). 

1. The ending includes a specific homage to Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949): that long road between lines of uniform trees. Here Marlowe walks down that road to find his supposedly dead friend Terry Lennox. After snuffing Lennox Marlowe walks back up that road, passing Lennox’s lover Mrs Wade as she drives to their thwarted reunion. They don’t look at each other, just as Valli ignored Joseph Cotten as she strode past him, her lover Harry Lime (Orson Welles) having been exposed and brought to justice. The connection goes further. In both films the hero pursues the supposed death of a good friend only to be disillusioned by finding him alive. Of course Altman includes another allusion to the film’s classic noir tradition. Mark Rydell’s smashing of a coke bottle into his paramour’s puss recalls Lee Marvin pouring hot coffee onto Gloria Graham’s face in The Big Heat. Tradition.
2. Before the plot gets going Altman spends a lot of time setting up the joke about Marlowe’s finicky cat. Though it may seem irrelevant, a red herring as it were, it embodies the central element of the plot — and Marlowe’s character — as the dumb-show plays out the imminent action in the play Hamlet presents to expose Uncle Claudius. This cat puts up with a lot, his master being the quirky loner that he is. But he has his limit. When Marlowe tries to fool his cat by putting a different cat food in his preferred brand can, the cat walks. For all we know he never returns. For his part, Elliott Gould’s Marlowe punctuates his mutterings with “That’s okay with me.” That’s the film’s most recurring phrase. In that mood Marlowe puts up with a lot. But when his old friend is accused of murder and suicide that’s not okay with him. He sets out to solve the mystery. And when he finds his friend suckered him, that’s his last straw — as bad as recanning a different cat food. So Marlowe whacks the friend whose reputation he'd set out to save. Everyone with integrity has his limits, cat or private eye. In the minor key: Marlowe will drink what Roger Wade is drinking — but he refuses to remove his J.C. Penney tie. Every cool cat has his limits.