By Jan Dawson / Film Comment
The translation was first published in "Iris"
Translator's note: Robert Altman is an "outlier" in Hollywood, living under the industrial system of Hollywood, but his creations are closer to European art films. Ultraman has won the highest awards in Cannes, Berlin (West Berlin at that time), and Venice with "Army Field Hospital", "The Heroes of Cisse", "Silver Sex and Men and Women", becoming one of the few European three. Grand Slam winner of the major film festivals.
In October 1973, "Film Review" special correspondent Jane Dawson conducted an exclusive interview with Ultraman. This article is written from the first-person perspective of Ultraman, mainly talking about Ultraman's new film "The Long Farewell" in 1973. , originally published in the March/April 1974 issue of Film Review.
A lot of people felt that the film "The Long Goodbye" abandoned Raymond Chandler. The respective novel's protagonists, Philip Marlowe and Sam Spedal, are seen as synonymous with private detective) - a drastic adaptation of his novel. The truth is, Chandler had to be left behind because he passed away in 1959. The movie is my interpretation, a speculation on what he might have expressed -- if he were still alive.
I distributed a copy of "Thus Said Raymond Chandler" to everyone on the set. I want them all to read Chandler's whims about murder, and then we transpose his whims to the character of Roger Wade (with Sterling Hayden playing the novelist). The book creates the illusion that Roger Wade committed suicide when he was actually murdered. But in my movie, he died by suicide. In a sense, Roger Wade was Chandler, the kind of lone hero who gave up fighting. He was just fed up with everything and wanted to escape.
There's a conversation between Wade and Marlowe on the beach where Wade asks, "Have you ever considered suicide?" I mean, he really told everyone what he was thinking. He lives in a world where there's no place for him anymore - suicide is almost a no-brainer. Our film adaptation is more about suicide than murder.
I think Marlowe also committed suicide. First, he suicidally chased a car through traffic—almost successfully. I'm not sure he doesn't, and I'm not sure the other anonymous man in bandages isn't really Marlowe. He even yelled at the bandaged man across a corridor: "You told him death is painless." All this was preparation for his escape.
I think the irony in the film is directed at the film itself, not at Chandler. It's so hard to satirize Chandler because he's a satirist himself. We're also very concerned about what he thinks about Marlowe, who he once said was a character who simply couldn't exist. So when the movie goes about shaping the character's life, we're not saying "the whole thing is fake," or that this guy who thinks he's Philip Marlowe is actually a lunatic, or a perfectly sane guy.
The strategy we chose was that he happened to be a private investigator. Today, I can't think of anyone who would like to watch a movie about a private detective. I think private investigators are a very disgraceful profession: all they do is dig up all kinds of information for sophisticated employers. So, if a man is going to be a private investigator, let him do it.
It's hard to compare Marlowe in this film to other versions. When a lot of people say "That's not Philip Marlowe", what they really mean is "He's not Humphrey Bogart" Lowe, and is generally regarded as the most successful character he has created). They're not talking about Chandler, they're talking about Hawkes, or Robert Montgomery, Dick Powell, those different versions of Philip Marlowe.
When I joined the film project, Leigh Brackett had already written the script, and the producers chose her because she had worked on Chandler's novel, The Long Night. They asked me if I needed a new writer, and I said no. I chatted with her for three days and roughly organized the plot. She knows exactly what to do with the film, doesn't interfere with the choice of scenes, and is very professional. Her first draft of the script was almost finished, and we later added a few characters, a scene or two, and built two or three relationships—but nothing major changed.
Marlowe in this film, like the one played by Bogart, wears a black suit, white shirt and black tie all year round. His shirts were all laundered and ironed; they looked very stiff, with creases at the front and back. He may be more diligent in changing his shirt than in the shower. His concept of dressing is roughly, a clean shirt with the same suit and tie.
The film is indeed satirical and appropriately dated. When we made the movie, we used to call him "Rip Van Marlowe". "Winkle" is a famous short story written by Washington Irving, the father of American literature. The protagonist Winkle's name is now commonly used as a derivative of "the time laggard"). He is like waking up from a dream for twenty years and finding I am out of tune with the world. He wandered around like a tour guide, realizing that he could no longer contribute. The only thing he was serious about was believing his friends—misbelief. Everything else is a complete mistake. He also did not do any action in the film, except for the ending, the rest can only be called reaction.
Indeed, Marlowe in this film lacks the heroism of the previous Marlowe adaptations. In fact, I personally have no opinion on the heroic deeds. It's just that I want to play the naysayer when so many people are celebrating heroes. I think there is an anti-hero too - he can be a hero in a way. Those who are considered heroes by the public may also screw up other people's things, and I may have a better opinion of fools. I consider myself a fool, the only person in your life you can have a good opinion of is a fool. It's about trust: if you don't trust a person, you can't have a good relationship. And being a fool is the only way to be trusted. I don't think Nixon was a fool.
The real mystery about The Long Goodbye is where Marlowe's cat went. I made this film in narrative order, and I think the most important thing about making this film is to set the cat suspense at the beginning. This tells the audience that our film will not have Humphrey Bogart, there will be no intense action scenes. Big action is almost a must for a movie of this type; we do just the opposite.
Marlowe doesn't like dogs, he belongs to the "cat faction". I think people go for one or the other, you'd be hard-pressed to see a person hugging the dog and the cat in an apartment - it's almost impossible. Marlowe had a cat who was always grumpy and never stayed with him. Every time he came home, Marlowe was looking for his cat, and he knew in his heart that the cat would never be found again. Once Marlowe can't give the cat what it wants, it disappears.
At the beginning of my new film, "The Man Without Tomorrow," Keith Carradine's prisoner escapes and sleeps under a bridge when a dog walks by. He treats the dog kindly, saying to it, "Do you have an owner, or are you a thief like me?" That night, he slept with the dog, who happened to be his blanket, and they huddled together to keep each other warm— —The next day, the dog followed him to town. A few days later, he met a girl and asked her, "Have you seen my dog?" The girl replied, "Oh, it was hit by a small train." Then the door slammed shut, and he But he said, "Well, it's not my dog anyway."
This man, like Marlowe, knew they couldn't expect much from love, and they lived that way. In a way, both men are heroes—or enviable. The word "hero" may not be the right word.
It is said that while Chandler tried to glorify World War II in the 1950s, "The Long Farewell" is going to glorify it, which is related to the setting of the 1970s, and time has changed old perceptions. Everyone used to be proud of the soldiers—they came back triumphantly, their faces painted, their uniforms, and their sleeves pinned. Now that you see people like that, you might think, "Oh my God, why did that idiot do this?" Everything has changed.
The behavior of the characters in the film shows that they are not people living in 1973: they represent a constant literary meaning, from other times. Roger Wade was like Owen Shaw, James Jones, Ernest Hemingway—drinking, masculine, and nothing else. These people are also frustrated, always thinking about what happened to them. Nina Van Parente's Erin Wade, on the other hand, never wears miniskirts, low-cut shirts, or topless like the girl living in the opposite room. Marlow himself knows as much about nudity as he does about yoga or yogurt.
Jim Burton as Terry Lennox is the kind of character who's going to win every game, he's always on top, he's got someone to do things for him - it's like, 'Wow, he's so charming', but you I also know that he will not hesitate to end your life for the sake of profit. He won't go out on the street and kill life, he's just a selfish person. We gave "Rip Van Marlowe" a belief that a friend is a friend, but his friend is Lennox. When you believe in a truth, but that truth in turn refutes you, you may have suicidal thoughts. We often discuss these tough questions in drama, but in real life we can accept anything.
So, I think Marlowe is dead. That's "The Long Farewell," and a farewell to the genre -- a genre that's never going to be popular anymore. The title also alludes to my own long goodbye: to making movies in Hollywood, to Hollywood, to the genre. I doubt if I'll ever make such a movie.
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