In his books The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye, novelist Raymond Chandler’s depictions of the sunny mean streets of Los Angeles and his wise-cracking private eye Phillip Marlow became a classic template for Hollywood cinema of the 1940s.

Robert Altman gives that format a distinctly 70s LA groove - complete with pot-smoking-all-women-hippie-commune neighbours - and a Marlow who is a closer relative of Jeff Bridges’ The Dude in The Big Lebowski than Bogart’s in The Big Sleep.

Elliott Gould’s dishevelled PI’s only crime is to try and con his cat into thinking it is getting its favourite brand of food, however a late-night visit from a Mexico-bound friend leads Marlow into trouble with both the cops and the mob. Unlike Bogart’s always-in-control detective Gould’s seems to stumble his way to, what turns out to be, an uncomfortable truth.

A 2K restoration c/o MGM and Park Circus

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