The Soundtrack Doth Repeat Too Much: Or, the Musical Spectacle of Keeping Up Appearances in Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye"

At first, this loss is a physical disappearance, but by the end of the film, Marlowe seems to have lost more than a friend or a friendship; the music participates in a bitter irony about these losses. [...]the film's final the soundtrack is really stuck making lateral moves, a prisoner of its s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Literature film quarterly 2016-01, Vol.44 (2), p.132-149
Main Author: McQuiston, Kate
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetics
Altman, Robert (1925-2006)
Film & stage music
Irony
Motion picture criticism
Motion picture industry
Music
Mysteries
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Summary:At first, this loss is a physical disappearance, but by the end of the film, Marlowe seems to have lost more than a friend or a friendship; the music participates in a bitter irony about these losses. [...]the film's final the soundtrack is really stuck making lateral moves, a prisoner of its stubborn sentimentality, just like Marlowe. The film's final scene of Marlowe walking and dancing away after killing Terry-and just before the reprise of "Hooray for Hollywood"-bears a knowing resemblance, which Altman acknowledged, to the end of The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1950), another film about a suspicious death and corruption (see Figs. 4 and 5) (Altman, Altman on Altman 75). [...]the soundtrack renders Chandler's aesthetics and subject matter in a way that a more conventional score could not.
ISSN:0090-4260
2573-7597