The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep

Directed by Howard Hawks

Written by Raymond Chandler (Book), William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman

Tonight's movie is Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep released in August of 1946. The film is a post war noir murder mystery starring arguably the most iconic actor of all time, Humphrey Bogart, and his wife Lauren Bacall. Along with these fantastic leads we have John Ridgley, Martha Vickers and Dorothy Malone.

The film follows Philip Marlowe (Bogart), a hardboiled private detective in Los Angeles who is called in by an aging General (Charles Waldron) who is being blackmailed by a man named Geiger. He tracks the man to his home where he finds Geiger murdered and the General's youngest daughter Carmen (Vickers) high and barely able to talk. The plot thickens as we learn that Carmen was involved in some kind of pornography in addition to the drugs. Soon after one of the family's chauffer's is killed and Marlowe must descend into the seedy world of underground gambling lorded over by Eddie Mars (Ridgley), a gangster who isn't afraid to use violence to get what he wants, to figure out exactly what is going on; all the while the General's oldest daughter Vivian (Bacall) is complicating matters and starts a romance with Marlowe.

The plot, to say the absolute least, is very convoluted. The film is actually famous for it's impenetrable plot and the fact that there's a murder that isn't solved at all and the film just sort of forgets about it certainly doesn't help. The strength of the story isn't the plot itself but how it's delivered. I'll get into it Bogart's character later but the story is fast paced and the dialogue keeps you engaged throughout the two hour runtime.

At first the film is deceptively simple, Marlowe follows one clue to another to another but it quickly becomes much more complex. I'd say when it turns from a straight mystery to the confusing mess it is happens when Eddie Mars gets introduced. Don't go into this movie expecting to know the answers because you won't, even the book's author and the film's writers or director didn't understand the whole story. Leave it to a screenplay written by William Faulkner (yes, the famous American author William Faulkner) to be complex and not make a lot of sense at the end.

The strongest part of the entire picture is Bogart as Philip Marlowe. To preface what is to follow I've never seen a Humphrey Bogart movie so I can't compare this performance to any of his others but I loved watching him interact with the other characters. He's a smartass and has a quip for everyone and some of his lines are just golden. I think one of my favorite examples of this is in his first scene with Vivian where the two have a great verbal back and forth. Bogart's Marlowe is cool, the epitome of the classic noir private eye who is always ready to laugh in the face of danger and share a funny joke or two. He was a pleasure to watch and even if the rest of the film wasn't half as good as it is it would still be worth it to watch just for Bogart.

Not to be outdone, Lauren Bacall's Vivian Rutledge is a standout. She threatens to steal the screen from Bogart every time they share a scene and the chemistry between them is electrifying. Bacall's star was rising, thanks in large part to her romance with Bogart, and it's easy to see why. Independent, smart, sexy, she brings a great performance and famously her agent Charles Feldman was vital in the production of this movie. He lobbied the studio to reshoot several of the scenes with Bacall to make them a bit steamier like certain scenes in To Have and Have Not, her first film with her future husband Bogart. The studio agreed and reshot some of the scenes like the one pictured and they ended up contributing to the lasting appeal of the film. The restaurant scene, the one I've pictured above, is one of the most famous in classic Hollywood and is one of my personal favorites. She is fantastic and I don't think this movie would have been half as successful without her in it.

The rest of the cast does fine, particularly Martha Vickers as Carmen. She plays a very odd, somewhat airheaded woman who is involved in a lot of illegal business. Because of strict censorship during the golden age of Hollywood the writers had to cut a lot of what she did in the original book. In the book, from what I know, she was much more of an explicit nymphomaniac and had several heavily sexual scenes. Obviously this wouldn't have been allowed back then so a lot of her character development is missing but regardless she takes her character and runs with it. Another good performance is a very small role with Dorothy Malone where she plays a book store owner and meets Bogart as he is staking out a shop across the street. In a small scene that is maybe four minutes long she and Bogart have an electrifying encounter with sexuality radiating from every frame. I could probably go on at length about almost every single scene in this film, that's how many great scenes there are.

I can't really describe just how wonderful this classic is. There's a reason it's mentioned by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, as well as countless others, as "one of the greatest film noir's of all time." Everything combines to make a truly engrossing film; the acting is superb, the chemistry is sizzling, the writing is top notch. There are only two criticisms that I have of the film and they don't really affect my enjoyment at all. The first has to do with the cinematography, there aren't really any interesting shots in the whole film but this was typical Hollywood until the late fifties and early sixties when the French New Wave began with films like Breathless, but that's something I want to get into some other time. The cinematography does it's best to go unnoticed and it does most of the time but on my second watch I did wish there was some more interesting cinematography. The other criticism is of course the story and it's convoluted nature. Like I said before this really doesn't bother me at all, the movie is more about the journey than the destination, but I can see this being a big problem for some people so if you really do need to have a plot that answers or even implies everything at the end this is definitely not your movie.

If you don't mind either of those faults though I can completely recommend this film to you. I know many people don't look forward to watching black and white movies, I had that very same feeling going in to this one, but I can promise that in a matter of minutes you'll be sucked in by the wonderful writing and performances and I think you'll realize just why this film is so fondly remembered.

Image and Video Sources:
http://onemovieblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-big-sleep-1946-analysis.html
http://paolobradleyclassiccinema.blogspot.com/2012/04/big-sleep-is-still-film-noir-at-its.html
https://alchetron.com/The-Big-Sleep-(1946-film)-15105-W
http://wordsdarkandlight.blogspot.com/2011/08/big-sleep-marlowe-at-acme-bookstore.html
https://www.aenigma-images.com/tag/howard-hawks/
http://looklikegarycooper.tumblr.com/post/68217279249/fritzlang-the-asphalt-jungle-humphrey-bogart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDrXJILTVek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22I8-g91kEQ