The Big Sleep (1946)
USA 115m, B&W
Director: Howard Hawks; Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers
As stories go, the Big Sleep is as convoluted as they come. There is a never-ending supply of beautiful women, plot twists, double crosses and murder victims, but the smooth-talking detective Philip Marlowe, played by Humphrey Bogart, always gives the impression that he knows what’s going on. Despite the lack of any discernible plot, the script is full of clever dialogue and plenty of sexual innuendo which somehow by-passed the strict censorship rules of the period. The strength of the film lies in Bogart’s great dialogue delivery and screen presence. His scenes with co-star Lauren Bacall, who plays Vivian – Marlowe’s femme fatale, are particularly memorable as he becomes entangled in her sordid affairs and her charms (Klaus Ming May 2009).
The famous anecdote is that when they were making the picture they got so confused trying to figure out who committed one of the murders that they called Chandler and he couldn’t figure it out either. (I went back and re-read the book out of curiosity, and that murder only makes sense because of the implication that two of the men were lovers, which obviously didn’t make it into the film — I don’t remember the details now, though.)
When Bogart and Bacall made such an impression in To Have and Have Not, this movie was reworked to include some more Bogart/Bacall scenes (the scene with the horse-racing innuendo was a new creation at that time) and some scenes which explained the plot were removed so it wouldn’t get to be too long. The original version was not exactly a model of clarity anyway, and I think the changes made it a better movie.