The Long Goodbye (film) - Changes From The Novel

Changes From The Novel

The story and plot of the 1973 cinematic adaptation deviate drastically from those of the 1953 novel; screenplay writer Leigh Brackett took many literary liberties with the story, plot, and characters of The Long Goodbye in adapting it. In a major plot and character departure from the novel, at the film's end, Philip Marlowe kills his best friend, Terry Lennox. The father of millionairess Sylvia Lennox is not in the film's storyline; Roger Wade's murder is a suicide in the film; and gangster Marty Augustine and his subplots are entirely cinematic creations.

The Long Goodbye satirizes the changes in culture between the 1950s, when the private detective genre was popular, and the 1970s, when the film was released; a making-of featurette on the DVD is entitled "Rip van Marlowe,″ to emphasize the contrast between Marlowe's anachronistically 50s behavior with the film's 1970s setting. One cliche of the genre invoked in the film is culled from the original novel when Marlowe, under police interrogation, asks "Is this where I'm supposed to say, 'What's all this about?', and he says, 'Shut up! I ask the questions'?" Marlowe's chain-smoking, contrasted with a health-conscious California in which no one else in the movie smokes, is cited as another example of Marlowe's incongruity with his surroundings.

The American iconography that Chandler laid down in his novels is maintained in the film. In addition to the 1948 Lincoln Continental Convertible Cabriolet that Marlowe drives, Gould also wears a tie with American flags on it (the tie looks plain red in the movie due to cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond's post-flashing).