The Long Goodbye

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Director: Robert Altman
Cinematographer: Vilmos Zsigmond
Editor: Lou Lombardo
Actors: Elliot Gould, Nina Van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden
Composer: John Williams

The Long Goodbye seems like another exercise in Altman’s voyeur style—the camera slowly floats along, always moving; shots begin from far away and off target from the players and then slide into a framing sequence. More then his other films, this one makes you feel like you are watching going-ons from outside. Every chance that Altman gets the camera is separated from the action by a window, as if you are looking in. Often, the camera is set in a long shot, as if we were spying from a distance. This feeling of spying on reality is further increased by the use of music in a diegetic manner through the film.

The film appears to have two intentions. As is often the case, the first intention is to tell a story—the investigation by Marlowe into the murder/suicide of the Lennoxes. However, as with most Altman film’s, the story is a secondary concern. The primary concern for Altman is to show the contemporary world through an outsider’s eyes. Altman achieves this goal largely through his use of framing.

Overall, the film shies away from any special editing. The editing is kept utilitarian. Most shots are long to medium, constantly shifting and these shots are only broken up by medium close-ups during conversation, which usually quickly return to a medium shot of all the actors in the scene. Beyond the logistics of showing conversation, the film rarely breaks away from the rule of medium to long shots. This limitation on the editing can be chalked up to Altman’s style—which always favors wide, lingering shots—but in this case, there is more suggested. The film’s constant framing of sequences through windows or from an extreme distance (for what needs to be shown) tends to convey a purposeful desire to make the viewer feel consciously feel like a voyeur. Combined with the use of diegetic music, the film seems to be pushing the viewer further into the role of an outsider looking at the real world. The film intends to make the viewer feel as if they are cast a drift in a world they don’t quite understand.

The outsider feeling is further enforced by the character of Marlowe. Marlowe acts like a man stumbling confused through the world. It is the intention of the direction to make you feel like Marlowe—like you exist in a world not quite your own that you are trying to understand, yet not quite grasping. The aimless nature of his investigation is matched by the wandering of the camera and these two details allow the audience to share in Marlowe’s separation.

In his use of the camera to create a sense of alienation that the audience shares with Marlowe, Altman is successful, but there are a few slips along the way. One aspect of the film that is lacking is the dialogue. Overall, the acting is good (although Sterling Hayden does tend towards caricature), but I can only assume that large portions of dialogue were freestyle—especially Marlowe—and the end results are less than satisfactory. The abundance of ums and ahs are irritating to say the least. Kept to a minimum, the lack of coherent dialogue from Marlowe could have been beneficial to the overall goal of the film, but as it stands it only hinders the presentation. Given Gould’s performance in M*A*S*H, I have to assume that this is largely part of the characterization of Marlowe, but it is taken too far. In a film tending towards a haunting sense of realism, caricature is a handicap.

Then there is the troublesome issue of the music at the end of the film. First, non-diegetic music appears to enter the film during Marlowe’s chase of Eileen’s car, but on further examination (Eileen’s singing along) it appears that this music is meant to be issuing from the car radio. Immediately after this, however, is non-diegetic music in the film—Marlowe’s second trip to Mexico. Although the music may issue from the bus, it continues once the scene has moved on and this explanation is no longer viable. These twofold instances of outside music sources (even if the one is just a badly represented internal music source) are a disappointing slip in a convention that is fairly well maintained throughout the rest of the film.

These musical slips are especially disappointing because it calls attention away from the only other examples of non-diegetic music in the film (and presumably what should be the only examples of non-diegetic music in the film)—the bookends of “Hooray for Hollywood.” These bookends signal Altman’s direction of the film. We are shown a film about Hollywood from an outsider’s perspective—and it is a damning condemnation. Altman is very clear in his opinion of Hollywood and the ending shows that we each have to force sense onto the world we are cast adrift in. Overall, Altman must be considered successful in getting his point across. Unlike M*A*S*H and Gosford Park where the wandering camera makes you feel as if you are moving through a room, The Long Goodbye casts the viewer alongside Marlowe—an outsider looking in at a world that doesn’t quite make sense.

Madness Placement: The Long Goodbye is the first film reviewed and stands alone.

The Measure of a Film, Part Two

Expression and Communication, Part One

All reviews of the arts are ultimately about opinion and these opinions should be clear to the reader. In film, what the reviewer considers the central goal of the film is the most important fact that can be stated. While it is possible for set design, costume design, lighting, acting, framing, and editing to be judged individually on less personal criteria, these individual evaluations don’t constitute a review of a film except in the most minimal sense. Only when these parts are viewed as a cohesive whole can a useful perspective be drawn from the disparate collection of opinions. Whether a film succeeds or fails, whether a film achieves a height of greatness or wallows in the dirt, is the result of the individual parts, but the ultimate criterion is the unity of the piece. The unity of all the parts can only be found in the intention or goal of the film. Judged as a standalone work, the intention of a film may seem different from reviewer to reviewer. Since the central goal or intention is what pulls an opinion of a film together, it is crucial that this goal be made known to the reader, so that they may judge the logic of your opinion for themselves.

If parts are considered individually, personal opinion can run completely unchecked. Does the reviewer have biases in lighting and acting? Does the reviewer have biases in costuming choices and editing? Taken individually, the various aspects of a film can be analyzed from a very personal point of view—but this point of view is a difficult thing to make clear, or for the reviewer to even be aware of. Stringing together varying opinions on the aspects of a film makes for an incoherent review, as these opinions may not always mesh.

The first unifying aspect of the whole is craft. Craft is the competency with which a part and the whole are put together. Although there is a limited range in which craft can be divined within each part without the overview of the whole, craft, as with everything else, is largely reviewed in terms of the big picture. This is why it is so important to determine exactly what the overall goal of a film is. Typically, craft is measured in terms of how skillfully each aspect advances the goal of the film. For a film determined to tell a story, costuming, set design, and acting are gauged on their ability to create a coherent world, while editing and framing are gauged on their ability to tell the story being represented. Unless a film is going off the beaten track, set design, costuming, acting, even lighting are easy to review because their sole goal is to create a coherent world for the story. To the end of telling a story, framing and editing can be judged by the smoothness and coherency with which they tell the story. At their most basic, editing and framing are judged by their invisibility.

Craft, however, cannot be separated from style and it is style that introduces all the thorny problems of film theory. In film, style is subjective in both creation and appreciation—it is the personal touch that makes a creation unique, but style that also makes a work open to other personal interpretations. This duel subjectivity makes style a difficult thing to convincingly review. But it is the multitude of style and the conflicting opinions that oppose each style that make each film more or less distinctive, more or less divisive. It is the diversity of man that makes critique possible—it is that same diversity that makes opinion so fallible. Without craft, style has no expression—without style, craft has no uniqueness. It is the thing that makes complete certainty impossible that draws us to examine cinema.

The Measure of a Film, Part One

A New Medium

Film is a medium, a medium within which any number of goals can be achieved. It is not what those goals are that interests us today, but how those goals are achieved. As a medium, film bears a close resemblance to theatre. In fact, there are only two aspects that conclusively separate film from theatre: framing and editing. Framing is the control of what within a scene is shown within a shot. Editing is the placement of shots in sequence with one another. In the use of these two tools, film justifies itself as a medium independent of theatre, and displays its greatest strengths.

There are two aspects that make up film—content and form. Content may be identical to theatre, but form is practically unique to film. Form is the combination of framing and editing. Form may be called the storytelling aspect of film, although this is not completely accurate. Form is the way the audience is manipulated by images. While the music may go a long way towards telling the audience how to feel about the action in the film, this music is still part of the content. Content is what makes up the images and the action of the film. The set design, acting, lighting, costume design, soundtrack—all of these things are part of the content of a film because they constitute the straight action of the piece. Form is the rule of image over action. The placement of images one after the other and the control of the content of the frame both influence what is felt and read into a specific action. This degree of control that editing and framing provide is not possible in theatre and its presence is what separates film from theatre.

Like theatre, a film’s audience is limited in its perspective—the audience experiences what is placed in front of them. In this way, both film and theatre—in this aspect at least—are a passive art. In theatre, the ability to frame is limited by the position of the audience, but film possesses the ability to change this position. A film is able to control the attentions of the audience. While theatre must deal with the roving eye of the audience, film places the point of focus right before the audience. And this point of focus is not the only thing controlled—the point of view is also supplied by the film. The ability to manage exactly what the audience sees and the way it sees it is a huge advantage in manipulating the effect of what is being presented. Different framings can produce different feelings and thoughts in an audience regardless of the actual content of the shot. This power over the content of the film is a huge advantage that film possesses over theatre.

Editing provides another powerful tool, which separates film from theatre. Editing stimulates the audience’s mind in a way that is not possible in the single perspective medium of theatre. The human mind makes stories out of what is placed before it—it sees cause and effect, and connections. Film plays on this ability to engage the audience unconsciously. Images that would have had no special meaning apart may have profound impact together. The movement from one perspective to another can represent a character’s move or a character’s mood. Editing can make movement more dynamic or its absence can let an action speak for itself. Editing gives a filmmaker the power to stimulate where there would previously been no stimulation, or to make meaning where there was none before. Editing makes film more fluid than theatre could hope to be.

Theatre and film are two closely related mediums, but they are two different mediums that can achieve different things. However, this difference is not in the representations that take place on the stage. The content is not what separates film from theatre—a play may be just as realistic as a film. It is in form that film becomes its own creature. Framing and editing combine to alter the content in a way different from any other medium—it is this interplay that is of the most interest to us as reviewers.