Usually Robert Altman bugs the shit out of me with his zoom lens and bad sound but I really liked his version of Raymond Chandler's novel even with Elliot Gould in the lead (did this fall before or after his work with Igmar Bergman that still baffles me to this day)!
Altman was trying to be cool and attempting to undermine the genre but Gould's mumbling loser Marlowe was really only a step away from Dick Powell's constantly unconscious verion of him in Murder, My Sweet. Noir was not so established or respected that it deserves or merits any sort of ridicule. Noir directors were playing around with their own conventions before its golden day was over so they knew what they were doing and we don't need Altman to point it out to us.
There I go! I knew it would be tough to actually convey the fact that I liked this film alot without ripping on Altman and saying — "Yes, the same man who gave us three hour of bad tv shows in one movie named Nashville gave us an actual cinematic triumph." But, trust me, The Long Goodbye is very good.
Long before Tarantino began to pen amusing gangsters like Jules and Vincent, there were a lot of films with very funny tough guys. From the thugs in Shoot the Piano Player to Clu Gulager and Lee Marvin in The Killers, personable gunmen have frequently found a home on screen. The same goes for The Long Goodbye and the psychotic shrimp mobster who even has Arnold Schwartzenegger in his underwear by the end of one scene.
So, even after Pret-A-er... Ready to Wear, which Mike Thompson calls Popeye 2, trust me enough to check out this outstanding work by a less than outstanding director.