Philip Marlowe's back and the Seventies got him. Raymond Chandler's private eye, who survived threats from gangsters, gamblers, karate experts, cops, treacherous women, sadistic killers, has finally been defeated—by his own code and an age that doesn't need it. At least, so says Robert Altman in the latest Marlowe movie, The Long Goodbye….

Altman's ambition … was more sweeping than most of his audience realised, for Marlowe and his fellow shamuses, gumshoes and dicks are not the only target for the director's satire and anger. An entire genre of tightlipped, cynical but grimly romantic films is being criticised and parodied in The Long Goodbye. The plot and characters come, albeit loosely, from Chandler's 1953 novel, but the characterisation and the ambience come from films like Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Nightmare Alley, Scarlet Street and the like, as well as from the 1940s private eye movies. (p...