Movie Review – The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep (1946) – Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) is called in to help settle the debts of the daughter of a wealthy man.  Seems like a simple enough case but even before he gets out of the house another daughter (Lauren Bacall) throws the first of many curve balls headed his way in this noir classic.  By the end Marlowe will be faced with murder, conspiracy, blackmail and maybe even love.

This is one of those movies that simply had no choice but to be great.  The source material is Raymond Chandler’s novel of the same name.  This was the first time it was brought to the big screen.  Directing is Howard Hawke, William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett contributed to the script.  Then you add in an incredible cast led by Bogart and Bacall.  They had met two years before on the set of “To Have and Have Not” when she was 19 and he was 45.  The chemistry between the two of them was impossible to ignore.  In the interim she had done a movie that had flopped (“Confidential Agent”) and Warner Brothers pushed for changes in the final edit to play up that on screen chemistry.  Off screen the romance had continued to grow and shortly after the movie was released Bogie divorced his wife and married Bacall.

This is the kind of movie you need to just sit back and enjoy the ride.  The plot is filled with twists, and the script is amazingly quotable.  The convoluted story that was the subject of much derision when it first came out can still be hard to follow but in some ways that’s part of its charm.

So, if I love this movie this much why does it only get a four star rating?  The down side of the script is that it is very much of its time and place.  Consequently, things that the post war audience would have understood instantly are rather obscure to the modern viewer.  It also makes the story a little clunky at times.  Some of the older movies make the transition to the modern audience with little or no trouble.  This one stumbles, just a bit.

Rating – **** Recommended