The Long Goodbye

Set in 1970s Los Angeles, The Long Goodaway follows private detective Philip Marlowe, who is asked by his friend Terry Lennox to drive him to the Mexican border in the middle of the night. When Marlowe returns, the police accuse him of helping a fugitive: Lennox's wife has been found murdered, and he is the prime suspect. Marlowe refuses to accept the official account and begins looking into the case himself, a decision that draws him into a circle of wealthy and dangerous people and puts him increasingly at risk.

Robert Altman directed the film, the fifth of the twenty-one features he made, arriving between Brewster McCloud and California Split. Leigh Brackett wrote the screenplay, and Jerry Bick produced. Elliott Gould plays Marlowe, with Nina van Pallandt, Sterling Hayden, Mark Rydell, Henry Gibson and David Arkin among a credited cast of thirty. The film treats Raymond Chandler's detective in a loose, contemporary style that mixes crime and mystery with dark comedy and drama.

Made for about two million dollars, the film drew modest audiences on release and has since been reassessed. Its reputation now rests on strong viewer scores of 7.5 on IMDb and 7.4 on TMDB, alongside a critics' rating of 8.7 from fifty-seven reviews, which places it clearly above the audience averages.