Object #6 - Cat Food - The Long Goodbye (1973)

Dir. Robert Altman

Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould), private investigator. Physically intimidating he is not. Unlike Humphrey Bogart, himself not averse to starring as PI's, Elliot Gould doesn't have the vibe to him that he's a force to be reckoned with. Bogart somehow had this aura that implied he could snap and take you out in a swift motion. What Gould does, and I believe better than Bogart does, is come across as the true Philip Marlowe. All snappy comebacks and disparaging remarks about the world-at-large, mainly told for his own amusement. He may use a gun, but his weapons are his words. Oftentimes they aren't that effective weapons but Marlowe gets by. Gould is vulnerable, as Bogart wasn't when playing the same character, and so I think Gould is closer to Chandler's Marlowe.

This may seem a bit odd to say considering that The Long Goodbye is time-shifted to the 70's, as opposed to the late 40's. Surely films such as The Big Sleep are more accurate? Maybe for the setting, but not the character. By having Marlowe in the 70's, himself a 40's, hell, maybe even a 30's character at-heart, we get this wonderful contrast. This makes Marlowe feel out-of-place with his own environment, which comes across as better in my opinion to the jaded, world-weary, yet savvy approach we get by in the 40's set films. His smoking, quintessential to the noirs of the 40's, have lost their coolness come the 70's. How he talks, his profession, Marlowe is a man out-of-time. 

So our object, cat food. This is another object that speaks more about character than plot. The film opens with Marlowe being woken by his hungry cat. He heads to the kitchen, the jazzy-noir soundtrack drawing us into the film. He offers the cat some some cat-food, the cat refuses. During this entire process Marlowe speaks to himself, commenting on the cat's taste, and so on. It's really great stuff, it's unreal but that's the charm of it. 

Marlowe heads to the shop, as he tells himself that the cat will only eat Courry brand cat-food. This is a man who wakes up at nighttime, lights a smoke, and heads to the shop to indulge a fussy cat. In the shop (I find it really hard not to write 'store', the noir vibe is so American!), he can't find the brand and asks a shopkeeper for help. We get this exchange (scene here, and you can see the entire 10 minute opening here):   

Philip Marlowe: Excuse me, I don't see any Courry Brand cat food here.

Supermarket clerk: Some what?

Philip Marlowe: Some Courry Brand cat...

Supermarket clerk: Could you spell that?

Philip Marlowe: Courry Brand, C-O-U-R-R...

Supermarket clerk: Oh, we're all out of that. Why don't you get this. All this shit is the same anyways!

Philip Marlowe: You don't happen to have a cat by any chance?

Supermarket clerk: What do I need a cat for, I've got a girl.

Philip Marlowe: Ha, ha. He's got a girl, I got a cat.

He's self-deprecating, he's confident, and obviously quite loving in a way, as he's willing to go to all this trouble all for his cat. On top of this, he lives opposite a bunch of pot-smoking, scantily-dressed women. They've asked him to get some brownie mix, I wonder what they're going to use that for? And he does so, as he returns with bag in hand, and hand over the mix:

Philip Marlowe: Night girls.

Girl #1: How much do we owe you?

Philip Marlowe: Oh that's okay, just put it on the bill.

Girl #1: Thanks...Mr.Marlowe, I'll save you a brownie.

Philip Marlowe: [walking away] Thanks a lot but they hurt my teeth.  

 The film is loaded with dialogue like this, it's superb. 'Just put it on the bill', he doesn't mind fueling these girls' enjoyment of weed for nothing, he sees it as a kindness, and the way he says it is humourous. 'They hurt my teeth' tells us that he doesn't partake in drug use, clearly a man who only enjoys a cigarette...or five.  The fact that there's young girls over there he could be chatting up but instead he's rather head home to cater to his fussy cat. So much character building in such a short amount of time.

And what does he do next? He goes to all the trouble of getting an empty Courry brand cat food tin from the bin, opens the new off-brand one, and transfers it to the Courry tin, humming to himself as he goes. The cat meows outside the kitchen door. "Oh the cat's hungry, right, right", and opens the door. Philip Marlowe man, the man's a pleasure to watch. He gets a smoke, comes back into the kitchen, opens the 'new' tin out of the bag, puts it into the bowl. The cat sniffs it for a few seconds, then jumps off the counter, and out a cardboard cut-out in the window to the city. 

All the effort Marlowe went to, for nothing. The cat could tell the difference and runs off to find a mouse or something. But what Altman, and especially Gould do here in the performance, is introduce us, via the cat-food and the brownie mix, to this man, Philip Marlowe. It's a MacGuffin to character development is what it is. It's superbly done, a testament to clever writing, atmosphere, and more than anything else, the acting of Elliot Gould. If I smoked I'd have one in his honour.