MovieChat Forums > The Long Goodbye (1973) Discussion > Butchered Chandler's novel

Butchered Chandler's novel

posted 17 years ago by CinemaBuff84
6 replies | jump to latest

I know Altman fans would argue that Altman has to make all of his projects Altman films but he simply butchered Chandler's novel.

It was not too hard to transfer the 1950 setting into a contemporary 1970 story so that was not Altman's limitation. First the most laughable crime Altman did to Chandler's novel is Marlowe killing Terry Lennox (and when did Terry and Marlowe become the best of friends in the novel they just met each other). In film adaptations you can understand and justly a director and/or screenwriter has to cut certain chunks of novels because no one wants to the filming of a novel but an adaptation of it. But Altman deletes a dozen character, eliminates huge plot points, murders the ending, the characters lost who they were.

Getting past Altman murdering Chandler's novel I did like Eliot Gould as Philip Marlowe he was a nice change of pace from Bogey's Marlowe. Nice change of pace but not better.

[–] McGonigle 17 years ago

Actually, this movie is the only Chandler adaptation I've ever seen that actually captures the atmosphere of Chandler's novels. If it had adapted every element of the original novel, it would have been four hours long.

I know I'm shouting, I like to shout.

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] faraaj-1 17 years ago

I haven't read Chandler's novel but wouldn't find fault with Altman for changing the novel to fit the film and his personal vision because he succeeded in making a great film.

And he's not the first or last person to do this. Some classic films like LA Confidential and The Shining are quite different from the novel they are based on. In the few faithful adaptations I've seen e.g. The Maltese Falcon or One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the novel lent itself to immediate adaptability. In fact, in Maltese Falcon the dialogue for the film was picked straight from Dashiell Hammett's novel (a sensible move by the way). I haven't read The Big Sleep either but again I imagine that brilliantly incoherent movie couldn't have been very faith to the original novel.

Along these mean streets walks a man who is not mean himself - neither tarnished, nor afraid...

[–] franzkabuki 11 years ago

"I imagine that brilliantly incoherent movie couldn`t have been very faithful to the original novel".

Actually, in terms of plot, the 1946 The Big Sleep is probably the most faithful Chandler adaptation out there as pretty much all significant changes were due to the infamous Code which made the inclusion of drugs, homosexuality and pornography impossible. Only the 1975 Farewell My Lovely rivals it in plot detail department.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

[–] mpeachhead 11 years ago

The novel the Big Sleep is famously a mess, so the film version is actually extremely faithfull. It was more about atmosphere than plot anyway. There's a great anecdote about how neither the director, the screenwriter, nor Chandler himself knew who killed Owen Taylor. Watch it again, and try to figure that one out.

I like the film The Long Goodbye better than the novel, particularly the ending. The novel's ending was not chilling, was much happier and cornier, and was much less believable than the movie ending.

The only thing that's really missing from the film is the friendship between Marlowe and Terry, and Marlowe's relationship with Mrs. Wade. You don't get to see either develop. Terry and Marlowe would also drink gimlets at a certain bar, and after his "death," Marlowe goes to the bar often and has a gimlet and thinks of Terry. That's the "long goodbye" of the title. That's missing, but otherwise, I love it.

[–] Cult_of_Kibner 9 years ago

I wouldn't call the Big Sleep novel a mess at all. Yeah there's the famous question of who killed that one guy, but other than that I thought the plot held up fine. The movie is a mess because of the fact that they smashed pretty much the entire story and all the characters into it while at the same time having to meet all the censorship standards, causing the story to become really hard to follow. Ironically I seem to remember that one ambiguous death being more clear in the movie thanks to that one guy responding to Marlowe's accusation with a "You can't prove it" attitude. I may be remembering wrong though.