The Long Goodbye

Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye” transposes Raymond Chandler’s labyrinthine noir into a sun-drenched Los Angeles, where detective Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) navigates a moral mire by aiding a friend accused of spousal homicide. Altman’s freewheeling style contrasts Chandler’s prose, casting Marlowe as a bemused hippie amidst capitalist decay, skewering the city’s moral and social hypocrisies with sardonic wit and dispassionate detachment.