The Long Goodbye is a 1973 American satirical neo-noir film directed by Robert Altman, adapted by Leigh Brackett from Raymond Chandler's 1953 novel of the same name.

The film stars Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe and features Sterling Hayden, Nina Van Pallandt, Jim Bouton, Mark Rydell, and an early, uncredited appearance by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The film has been called "a study of a moral and decent man cast adrift in a selfish, self-obsessed society where lives can be thrown away without a backward glance ... and any notions of friendship and loyalty are meaningless.

[4] Down-on-his-luck private eye Philip Marlowe leaves his Los Angeles apartment to buy cat food.

Marlowe spends three days in jail, but is released after Mexican authorities report that Terry has committed suicide in Mexico.

Marlowe asks the police to call off the Lennox investigation; they dismiss his theory, but confirm that Roger met with Sylvia before going to rehab.

In October 1965 it was announced that producers Elliott Kastner and Jerry Gershwin held the rights to Goodbye and would film it the following year in Los Angeles and Mexico.

[11] Kastner and producer Jerry Bick bought the rights back and made a production deal with United Artists to finance a film.

[13] The producers commissioned a screenplay from Leigh Brackett, who had been Kastner's client when he was an agent and had written the script for the Humphrey Bogart version of The Big Sleep.

[12] United Artists president David Picker may have picked Gould to play Marlowe as a ploy to get Altman to direct.

At the time, Gould was in professional disfavor because of his rumored troubles on the set of A Glimpse of Tiger, in which he bickered with costar Kim Darby, fought with director Anthony Harvey, and acted erratically.

[19] Brackett had problems with Chandler's plot, which she felt was "riddled with cliches", and faced the choice of making it a period piece or updating it.

He even nicknamed Gould's character Rip Van Marlowe, as if he had been asleep for 20 years, woken up, and was wandering around Los Angeles in the early 1970s but "trying to invoke the morals of a previous era".

[23] Altman made several changes to the script, like having Roger Wade commit suicide and having Marty Augustine smash a Coke bottle across his girlfriend's face.

Nina Van Pallandt was best known at the time as the ex-lover of writer Clifford Irving, who had written a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes that turned into a major scandal.

[26] Henry Gibson was another odd choice, having just completed four years as a cast member of the TV comedy-variety series Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In.

To compensate for Southern California's harsh light, Altman gave the film a soft pastel look reminiscent of postcards from the 1940s.

It was Altman's idea to have every occurrence of the latter song arranged differently, from hippie chant to supermarket muzak to radio music, setting the mood for Marlowe's encounters with eccentric Californians while pursuing his case.

Altman attended a question-and-answer session afterward, where the mood was "vaguely hostile", reportedly leaving the director "depressed".

[24] Studio executives analyzed the reviews for months, concluding that the reason for the film's failure was the misleading advertising campaign in which it had been promoted as a "detective story".

[36] Though the film has been lauded by critics in the decades since its release, contemporaneous reviews complained of Altman's handling of the noir genre and Gould's portrayal of Marlowe.

Time magazine's Jay Cocks wrote, "Altman's lazy, haphazard putdown is without affection or understanding, a nose-thumb not only at the idea of Philip Marlowe but at the genre that his tough-guy-soft-heart character epitomized.

[37] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times found the film "quite sleek, marvelously and inventively photographed ...

The problem is that the Altman-Brackett Marlowe, played by Elliott Gould, is an untidy, unshaven, semiliterate, dim-wit slob who could not locate a missing skyscraper and would be refused service at a hot dog stand.

"[39] Roger Ebert, however, gave the film three out of four stars and praised Gould's performance, "particularly the virtuoso ten-minute stretch at the beginning of the movie when he goes out to buy food for his cat.

[40] Gene Siskel also liked the film and gave it three-and-a-half out of four stars, calling it "a most satisfying motion picture" with Gould displaying "surprising finesse and reserve" in his performance, though he faulted the "convoluted and too quickly resolved plot".

[41] When The Long Goodbye was rereleased, reviewer Vincent Canby wrote, "it's an original work, complex without being obscure, visually breathtaking without seeming to be inappropriately fancy".

[42] Pauline Kael's lengthy review in The New Yorker called the film "a high-flying rap on Chandler and the movies", hailed Gould's performance as "his best yet" and praised Altman for achieving "a self-mocking fairy-tale poetry".

[43] Despite Kael's effusive endorsement and its influence among younger critics, The Long Goodbye was relatively unpopular and earned poorly in the rest of the United States.

The site's critical consensus reads, "An ice-cold noir that retains Robert Altman's idiosyncratic sensibilities, The Long Goodbye ranks among the smartest and most satisfying Marlowe mysteries.