SILVER

Resetting Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles detective classic from the 1940s to the 1970s, Robert Altman and company created a one-of-a-kind film that gleefully breaks all the rules. Elliott Gould plays private eye Philip Marlowe as a shambles — a mumbling oddball who's nonetheless the lone voice for moral order in a corrupt world. Other memorable performances include a Hemingway-esque Sterling Hayden as alcoholic novelist Roger Wade, baseball pitcher/"Ball Four" author Jim Bouton as Marlowe's missing friend Terry Lennox, Mark Rydell as violent gangster Marty Augustine and a cameo by a young Arnold Schwarzenegger as his hired muscle. The groundbreaking camerawork — constantly gliding, never still — is by Vilmos Zsigmond, and John Williams' eponymous theme song recurs organically throughout the film, cleverly arranged as supermarket Muzak, a hippie chant and a song on the radio. DIR Robert Altman; SCR Leigh Brackett, from the novel by Raymond Chandler; PROD Jerry Bick. U.S., 1973, color, 112 min. RATED R

AFI Member passes accepted.