Sightlines · reception
How The Long Goodbye was received
1973 · Robert Altman · The Long Goodbye on Sightlines
The arc
It bombed on first release in 1973 — Chandler purists were furious and United Artists yanked it, re-marketing it with a jokey Mad-magazine-style poster before trying again. Half a century later it's canonized as one of the great 70s LA films and peak Altman.
What’s debated
The eternal fight: is Elliott Gould's mumbling, cat-feeding Marlowe a betrayal of Raymond Chandler or the whole brilliant point — with the ending still splitting rooms fifty years on.
Its footprint
Marlowe's shrugging 'It's okay with me' became the film's signature refrain, and its shambling LA-noir DNA runs straight into The Big Lebowski — the Coens have acknowledged the debt. The opening cat-food scene is a cinephile touchstone all on its own.
Where it stands
A flop-turned-classic that's now a Letterboxd darling and the default answer to 'best 70s neo-noir hangout movie'.
Did you know? Screenwriter Leigh Brackett also co-wrote the 1946 Bogart classic The Big Sleep — meaning the same writer scripted both Hollywood's definitive straight Marlowe and its definitive subversion, 27 years apart. Bonus: nearly every note of music in the film is the same John Williams title song, rearranged endlessly — as supermarket muzak, a doorbell, a mariachi dirge.