where the woman gets suckerpunched - why does this stand out for me, above all the other frightening memories, as so atrocious and unforgettable? its out of nowhere quality....and you don't expect it from Altman somehow.
shareThis scene shocked me, too. It is very reminiscent of a scene in "The Big Heat" (1953), between Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin. Although that is a relatively well-known movie, I don't do spoilers. (I think Altman has said he is a big fan of Fritz Lang, who directed "The Big Heat," but you're right, he doesn't usually go in for this kind of sadism.)
Let me say that both are very violent acts that catch the audience completely off-guard. There is a certain type of movie "tough guy" who rarely picks on anyone his own size. Their victims are often defenseless and vulnerable. It makes them despicable, it makes it clear they are rotten to the core, and it makes their actions shocking, and as you say, atrocious.
there is a similar scene between the two gay(?) hoodlums in "Harper". cannot remember the exact details. Similar to "TLG" in that it left me with an overall impression of the movie as sleazy and gross.
sharethe one thing i really like about that scene is how visably shocked and repulsed even his own henchmen are when he does it.
shareThis movie is very stylalized & obvious that you're watching a movie & NOT in a trance. So if this is most disturbing, then one is not only entranced (asleep) & under someones spell, but the viewer does not treat men equally & is firmly entrenched with sexist views & inequality, & most undoubtedly politically correct & hypocritical. Lots of characters get suddenly & without justification hurt very badly & tortured for a long time period. It's not like this movie character got murdered or committs suicide, as happens in the movie. I find the character to be sadly pathetic not that she didn't deserve such mistreatment, but that she returns to him like a low class, hopeless co-dependent & low-class. She recovers, & there is never any question that she'd live. But two men die as I mentioned, but heh, who cares? Any loss of life is tragic. For whom does the bell toll? YOU!
shareYou seem pretty eager to call people names. The original poster may be all of those things; sexist, hypocritical, under someone's spell, but you can't make that conclusion based on what he wrote. Come off it. That may not be the most violent scene in the movie, but that's different than disturbing. Men die in movies a lot. It loses it's shock value pretty quickly, especially knowing that it's all special effects. What doesn't happen a lot in movies is women getting hit, let alone sucker-punched. Naturally, a viewer wouldn't be prepared for this, and even if warned ahead of time, would probably still find it a little disturbing. Face it, men and women are built differently. In the moment, a man hitting a woman could be more disturbing than any other typical violent act. Also, it would help everyone if you improved your grammar and spelling.
sharethank you for your support. I don't know where that person was coming from - how can they call me a sexist for complaining about a woman getting suckerpunched? I sense a bit of jello in the cranial matter.
thank you for pointing out that I did not say violent, rather disturbing.
You are a moron - or possibly a dangerous sociopath.
You should only get treated that badly yourself some day.
Putz
I think that it stands out because she is the one that we dont expect to get hurt. That is the boss' girl. Just tagging along, to see how her man does business, as in many other movies. Then, BAM, right in the face. If he had hurt Marlowe or his own henchmen, there would have been no problem. We almost expected them to get hurt, but not her.
At the top of the mountain, we are all Snow Leopards. -Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
In the book Altman on Altman, Robert Altman tells the story of finding that woman. He and Elliot Gould and a few other folks went to this restaurant in Malibu and she was the waitress. The all agreed that she would be perfect as Marty's girlfriend. So she got the part and did a few other things over the next couple years. Then about 4 years later she was out with some friends and came home late. Her roommates and a bunch of other people were around, all super high on drugs. So she goes to bed and one of the guys comes into her room and jumps on her. They scuffle a bit and he ends up biting her nose clean off her face! Now that is some serious business.
Anyway, art imitates life imitates art i guess.
Cheers
I think that scene with the girl and the Coke bottle helped a lot in setting up a later scene in which Marty Augustine makes everybody strip, so as to tell the truth, and then he hands a knife to one of his henchmen and tells him (in reference to Marlowe) to "cut it off."
We already know he is capable of depraved violence vis-a-vis his earlier attack on his girlfriend (that's someone he loves, Marlowe he doesn't even like), so the viewer's expectations are definitely heightened at this point. We actually expect that Marlowe might in fact lose an important part of his anatomy. I really expected all hell to break loose in that scene. But the way it played out was..... well, I won't spoil it for people who haven't seen the movie.
>>its out of nowhere quality....and you don't expect it from Altman somehow.<<
I haven't seen all of Altman's films, but just prior to watching TLG, I watched "Brewster McCloud," and there is a scene which includes an unexpected suicide that really caught me off guard. I won't spoil the details for those who haven't seen it, but yes, Altman can in fact throw the viewer some unexpected violence.
Oh, and re: akg96-1, is a clock in Switzerland perhaps missing its Cuckoo??
I love Jewish gangsters. You don't see enough these days.
shareTwo names from the real underworld Golden Era; Meyer Lansky (the Brain)& Ben Siegal (Bugsy). The Sicilians looked down on them but they really needed them too. Lansky was a financial & organizational genius. Ben Siegal was loyal, ruthless & absolutely & totally fearless.
shareThe Purple Gang - from Detroit was a Jewish mob The Purple Gang was Detroit's most notorious organized crime gang in the 1920s and 1930s. Led most often by members of the Bernstein family (most notably brothers Ray and Abe) the Purple Gang was made up of immigrants from Detroit's lower east side.
they also had some fine musicians
Spider Murphy played the tenor saxophone
Little Joe was blowin' on the slide trombone
The drummer boy from Illinois went crash boom bang
The whole rhythm section was the purple gang
It IS shocking & perfectly establishes why Marlowe shouldn't expect the least bit of mercy or compassion from Marty.
"THAT'S someone I love. You---I don't even like."
I've remembered that line since '73.
Carpe Noctem!
Even better, I think, is that when Augustine has her sit down, face all bandaged, and starts his menacing chatter all over again, you really think he might smash her face a second time.
Well I think that it's supposed to be out of nowhere and arbitrary and Altman showed it that way to condemn that act of violence by showin how ugly it is. And by the way look at how shocked his henchmen are.
In a sense you could say it's the post-code equivalent to James Cagney hitting that girl's face with that peach fruit in The Public Enemy, a famous still shocking bit of filmed misogyny. As controversial in it's time as Lee Marvin throwing that hot coffee on Gloria Grahame's face in The Big Heat.
The reason behind it is to show how brutally women get treated by men with macho obsessions. Like Marty Augustine(think how absurd that name is) is shown as this poseur, comic freak...which makes his violence all the more shocking. Like he doesn't care that he doesn't have any conscience at all.
"Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs." - Nathanael West
yeah man
shareI run a horror site, and therefore I watch messed up stuff all the time, but when that guy hit that woman in the face my mouth was literally hanging open with shock for over a minute. That was very disturbing; I knew he was going to do something to her but I didn't guess that.
shareI was even MORE shocked when she comes out in that horrible hospital get-up, her face wired together and STILL with Marty.
shareI'll be honest, I saw it coming. I could tell by the way he was actually paying attention to her and turning everyone's attention to her.
It was awful, though, and I felt pain in my face. For her to return, he was probably undermining her all along, giving her drugs for free and her self esteem was shattered.
"Two more swords and I'll be Queen of the Monkey People." Roseanne
It is true to the character. All sociopaths are like this & extreme sociopaths make successful criminals. I should know since I work in a maximum security prison. I know the type well. He told her to stay in the car. He was doing business which could incriminate him. She naively came upstairs. This made him very angry & he couldn't control himself. True to character even though violent & brutal. Remember this if you ever get mugged. These people enjoy inflicting pain. Inside they are very angry & they can relieve this somewhat by lashing out.
shareThe scene is shocking -- doubly so in a movie which, up to that point, seems to be mellow and non-violent and jokey for a "mystery thriller"(even with the dead beaten wife.)
My only problem with the scene is that Augustine uses a Coke bottle on her face -- it seems to me that the thickness and density of such a bottle, it wouldn't shatter on her cheekbones - it would smash intact right into the bone. A large glass might have been more believable.
But anyway...
...in doing this, Augustine is a good "early model" of the more psychopathic type of gang boss we'd be getting over the years. One reason these men ARE the boss is that they are capable of atrocities at the drop of a hat. I zoom forward to Albert Brooks in "Drive" (2011) as another LA Jewish gangster who, when enraged, drives a fork into the eyeball of a lesser hood before slashing the man's throat. These men are capable of ANYTHING; nothing physically repulses them.
Meanwhile, back at The Long Goodbye: there is the "lingering horror" that the film catches up with the woman later, the same night of the attack, and she is whimpering and tending to her bloody face with a towel. THIS violent moment...lingers.