The Long Goodbye

Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.

• Director: Robert Altman
• Genre:Crime / Drama / Mystery / Thriller
• Runtime:108 minutes

Cast

Elliott Gould : Philip Marlowe
Nina Van Pallandt: Eileen Wade (as Nina van Pallandt)
Sterling Hayden : Roger Wade / Billy Joe Smith
Mark Rydell : Marty Augustine
Henry Gibson : Dr. Verringer

Late one night, private investigator Philip Marlowe is visited by his close friend, Terry Lennox, who asks for a lift from Los Angeles to the California–Mexico border at Tijuana. He obliges.

On returning home, Marlowe is awaited by two police department detectives, who accuse Terry Lennox of having murdered his rich wife, Sylvia. Marlowe refuses to give them any information and they arrest him. After three days in jail, the police release him, because Terry Lennox committed suicide in Mexico. It is an open-and-shut case to the police and the press, but the “official facts” do not sit right with Marlowe.

In the meantime, Marlowe is hired by Eileen Wade, the platinum-blonde trophy wife of Roger Wade, an alcoholic novelist with writers’ block, whose macho, Hemingway-like persona is proving self-destructive. She asks that Marlowe find her husband, who, despite such regular alcoholic binges and days-long disappearances, now seems to be missing.

In the course of investigating Mrs. Wade’s missing-husband case — visiting the sub-culture of “private” detoxification clinics for rich alcoholics and drug addicts — Marlowe learns that the Wades “knew” the Lennoxes socially. He is increasingly convinced that there is more to Terry’s suicide and the murder of Sylvia. Read more