What do a washed-up Hemingway-esque writer on an extended perilous booze binge (Sterling Hayden in an amazing performance), an intensely menacing rehab administrator (an eerily effective Henry Gibson which must have stunned viewers who only knew the actor as the goofy fey comedic poet from Laugh-In), a prankish mob boss equally capable of creating both laughter and abrupt bursts of unspeakably unsettling violence in the same breath (director Mark Rydell in yet another unexpected turn), a gaggle of gorgeous post-hippie-hangover pot-brownie gobbling bohemian neighbors and one of filmdom’s most spectacular housecat performances have in common? They’re all habitués of maverick New Hollywood director Robert Altman’s unorthodox reinterpretation of Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye, which pits traditional noir masculinity against the anything-goes, quaalude-&-yoga ethos of early 1970’s Los Angeles. As the action takes these self-destructive characters from Malibu to Mexico, the elegant, subversively unsentimental tone creates a fascinatingly downbeat, lurid world that lies somewhere between sincere homage and radical deconstruction of Chandler’s source material (adapted by Leigh Brackett, one of the co-writers of previous Noirvember at the Quad classic feature The Big Sleep, along with some on-the-spot, improvisatory free-associative revisions by Altman, Gould and Hayden).

After a late 60’s/early 70’s hot streak, Elliot Gould hadn’t done a movie in two years after alleged erratic behavior on the set of his last project, which ended up being abandoned. The Long Goodbye served as a comeback and a confirmation that Gould and Altman indeed continued to be a dynamic duo.  As always, Altman displays various iconoclastic auteur tendencies, including innovative sound design (the title track pops up in six different iterations, some diagetic and some not), juxtaposing anachronistic touches with ultra-modern flourishes and having DP Vilmos Zsigmond purposefully manipulate the filmstock using a flashing technique creating a washed-out and grainy yet still refined look that perfectly suits the mood. Zsigmond also captures several exquisite shots of glassy reflective surfaces that yield superimposed images of different sets of characters serving different elements of the plot-furthering actions at the same time. Like many of Altman’s films, it received negative reviews upon release but in the ensuing years has become a respected classic.