Elliott Gould recently celebrated his eightieth birthday, which presents a fitting moment to appreciate his contributions as one of the notable participants in the New Hollywood. From 1968 to 1977 (stretching slightly here to include Capricorn One, a ridiculous movie that we have a tremendous fondness for), Gould appeared in a score of feature films. That number might have been even higher, but for a period between 1971 and 1973 when his reputation for being “difficult” led to a hiatus in his employability. (We should note this was largely old school “fighting over content” difficult, not “I want peeled grapes and sushi in my all-white dressing room” difficult. And he couldn’t have been that difficult—Robert Altman and Paul Mazursky each wanted to sign him up for back-to-back efforts, but Gould curiously turned down both McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Alex in Wonderland.)
Of those many movies, a good number fall in the category of fair-to-middling (partially a function, as suggested above, of the actor’s idiosyncratic choices). The period-pitched college-campus-in-upheaval Getting Straight, opposite Candice Bergen and Jeff Corey, has many strong moments (and wears its years better than the “isn’t monogamy hard in the seventies” comedies Move and I Love my Wife, both from 1970, wherein our hero struggles to find happiness with Paula Prentiss and Brenda Vaccaro, respectively). Gould also showed a flair for action, with the very-seventies cop film Busting alongside Robert Blake and the always welcome Allen Garfield, and the similarly-seventies espionage thriller Who?
Gould’s case for the New Hollywood Hall of Fame, however, is not based on his singles and doubles, but a half dozen tape-measure home runs, in an impressive run of films from 1969-1974: Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), MASH (1970), Little Murders (1971), The Touch (1971), The Long Goodbye (1973), and California Split (1974).
Paul Mazursky’s debut feature is set in motion by the revolutionary, new-age lifestyle choices embraced by Bob & Carol (Robert Culp and Natalie Wood). But as the movie smartly and slyly suggests, more interesting still is the effect of those choices on their straight-laced best friends. Gould, as Ted (Dyan Cannon plays Alice), is at the center of this, in an extraordinary performance highlighted by a harrowing, Cassavetes-worthy bedroom argument that extends for ten discomforting minutes.
MASH was the first of Gould’s three Altman collaborations (a cameo in Nashville would make four); it was also where Gould first encountered Donald Sutherland. After first circling each other warily, the two actors became very close friends, and, in turn, famously clashed with Altman throughout the production. Gould, of course, would come to see Altman quite differently: “God, Robert Altman… You’ll bring me to tears. I mean, he was like my father. I just loved him, and there was so much other work, more work that we talked about and would’ve loved to have done together.” What they did accomplish together, of course, was quite special. In addition to MASH, they collaborated on California Spilt (Gould alongside George Segal in an incisive portrait of compulsive gamblers, usually associated with Altman’s love of such activities and his penchant for taking wild risks, but which Gould also describes as “semi-autobiographical”), and The Long Goodbye, one the landmarks of the seventies.
In his four-star review, Roger Ebert described Little Murders as “a very New York kind of movie, paranoid, masochistic and nervous.” It boasts an impressive array of talent: directed by Alan Arkin and written by Jules Feiffer (based on his Broadway play), Murders was shot by seventies maestro Gordon Willis (Michael Chapman operated the camera), and featured an excellent cast (including a terrific one-off scene with Sutherland). Gould’s performance (he also produced the film) both carries the movie and holds it together; standout moments include his blood-soaked subway ride (one that summarizes in an image the seventies shell-shocked big apple), and this riveting monologue.
The New Hollywood was about making movies, but it was also about personal exploration, taking chances, and learning—three things that led Gould, then with all of a half-dozen comedies on his resume, to decamp to Sweden and star in Ingmar Bergman’s The Touch. Also befitting the ethos of the movement – and just as gutsy a move – is that his character is a rather unpleasant fellow, and Gould does nothing to even hint to the camera reassuringly that he’s still your friendly neighborhood movie star just kicking the tires on a heavy role. Instead, without flinching, he holds his own alongside legends Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson, in one of the great (if still under-appreciated) films of Bergman’s middle period. Or as Gould puts in in this marvelous, long form interview, “the film is a fucking masterpiece, and it’s like the song goes: You can’t take that away from me.”
Gould in The Long Goodbye