I was 23 when I first saw this in a theater. I left scratching my head. I was already a Robert Altman fan, but he seemed the last guy on earth that would adapt Raymond Chandler. Elliott Gould, known mostly at the time as a comic actor, as Phillip Marlowe? That was like replacing Bruce Willis with Steve Carell in a Die Hard movie.

Watching it now, I see how much I missed watching it as a callow youth.

Gould/Altman decided to portray Marlowe as a man out of time. From the dim alleys and sleazy nightclubs of Bogart-era Chandler, we are transported into sun-drenched SoCal. Everyone's dressed for the beach or a patio party. Marlowe's in a black suit. People are drinking, but Marlowe has a perpetual cigarette in his mouth. He twitches and mumbles. His neighbors are a gaggle of cute girls who are usually topless. Except when he needs their help finding his cat, he ignores them.

Tough "knight errant" Marlowe has a cat? Oh yes. In fact, the entire first 10 minutes of the movie are devoted to him and his cat as he goes on a middle-of-the night quest to a supermarket for cat food. He can't find the brand his cat likes, so he buys another brand, brings it home, shuts his cat out of the kitchen, transfers the cat food to an empty can of the kind the cat likes, lets the cat into the kitchen, shows it the label on the can and dishes it out. The cat turns up its nose and ends up running away.

Why is this scene in a detective movie? It shows the length he will go to take care of someone (or some cat) he cares about, even though he ends up betrayed. And that's the bottom line on Marlowe.

He's a man of deep integrity, plain and simple. That is why, handed a case, he can stroll blithely through all kinds of corruption, vanity, stupidity, sadism and treachery with total equanimity. "It's OK with me," is his constant refrain. It simply doesn't rub off on him.

The entire cast is superb. Sterling Hayden roars his way through the movie as an alcoholic Hemingway-esque writer. Henry Gibson is a sleazy doctor. Nina Van Pallandt is the glamour, floating around in billowing clothes. Marty Rydell is a gangster boss who has the second most shocking scene in the movie when he uses his meek girlfriend to demonstrate to Marlowe what he is capable of.

Marlowe himself has the most shocking scene, at the end, when he delivers justice. His final moment on camera, a long shot on a cheerful moment, reveals that we didn't really understand this guy at all.

Classic noir. Classic '70s cinema. Classic Altman.