The Big Sleep (1946 film)
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| The Big Sleep | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Howard Hawks |
| Produced by | Howard Hawks |
| Written by | Raymond Chandler (novel) William Faulkner Leigh Brackett Jules Furthman (screenplay) |
| Starring | Humphrey Bogart Lauren Bacall John Ridgely Martha Vickers Dorothy Malone |
| Music by | Max Steiner |
| Cinematography | Sidney Hickox |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures Inc. |
| Release date(s) | August 23, 1946 |
| Running time | 116 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
The Big Sleep (1946) is the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. It stars Humphrey Bogart as the hard-boiled private-eye Philip Marlowe and his eventual real-life wife Lauren Bacall as the femme fatale. The film was directed by Howard Hawks and is an example of the film noir genre. William Faulkner cowrote the screenplay with Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman.
The film features one of the most convoluted plots in cinema history. The narrative is even harder to follow given that it leaves several elements of the story undeveloped. The various plot strands are rather precariously held together within the film’s gossamer structure.
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[edit] Plot
Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) visits his new client, General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), presumably to take care of some gambling debts of his younger daughter, Carmen (Martha Vickers), to a bookseller named Geiger. The older daughter, Vivian (Lauren Bacall), suspects that her father is more concerned with finding out what happened to employee Sean Regan, who had mysteriously disappeared about a month prior.
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Shortly afterwards, Marlowe finds Geiger shot dead in his home. An unidentified man flees the scene, leaving Carmen inside, high on drugs. Marlowe finds a camera in the house with the film missing. Joe Brody (Louis Jean Heydt) has the film and is attempting to extort money from Sternwood by threatening to implicate Carmen in the murder.
Later, it is revealed that Sternwood’s chauffeur, Owen Taylor, shot Geiger. Brody merely clubbed Taylor unconscious and took the film. He left Taylor in the car, which was later driven off the pier, leading to a watery death. This left the director, the screenwriters, and even Raymond Chandler himself baffled. None of them could figure out who had killed Taylor. Also not developed is Geiger’s murder, nor the later murder of Brody by Geiger’s shadow, Carol Lundgren (presumably, among other reasons, because Lundgren is a man and Geiger's homosexual partner - not something the censors would have permitted in 1946). The story soon focuses on the mystery at the heart of the film: the whereabouts of Sean Regan.
Eddie Mars (Joe Ridgely) owns the house that Geiger lived in, and also owns a gambling establishment frequented by Vivian. Marlowe first meets Mars while he is investigating the Geiger murder, which had also taken Mars by surprise. The two offer each other their help if needed. However, Mars becomes decidedly less friendly when Marlowe asks about Sean Regan, who had presumably run off with Mars’ wife. Vivian too is anxious for Marlowe to close the case after the resolution of the Geiger matter, and to stop him from inquiring about Regan. Marlowe is curious why Mars isn’t more interested in finding his wife, and why so many people don't want him to find Regan.
It is later revealed, at least implicitly, that Mars convinced Vivian that he has proof that Carmen had murdered Regan, and had been using this to compel Vivian’s cooperation. Meanwhile, Mars’ wife in fact did not run off with Regan at all, but was merely hiding out to make it look like she did. Mars hopes that this will keep the cops from making him a suspect. Marlowe eventually convinces Vivian to help him instead of Mars, and the two of them figure out that it was Carmen who killed Sean Regan after all. Mars is then mistakenly shot by his own men after an apparent shootout at the Geiger house. Marlowe phones Bernie for back up but lies in saying Mars killed Regan inorder to protect the Sternwood Family.
[edit] Background
The film is fondly remembered for its extremely convoluted plot. A famous story tells that, during filming, the director and screenwriters could not figure out who had killed chauffeur Owen Taylor. They sent a cable to the author, who replied "I'm damned if I know!" [citation needed]
After the film was completed, it was shelved while Warner Bros. worked to release a backlog of war-related films. It was decided that since the war was drawing to a close, public interest in these films would be substantially less after its conclusion, whereas The Big Sleep had no such time sensitivity requiring a more immediate release. (A careful eye will spot many indications of The Big Sleep being shot during the war, such as ration stamps and dialogue, and pictures of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.)
Once the war ended, the "Bogie & Bacall" phenomenon caused by To Have and Have Not as well as their subsequent marriage, was in full swing. Bacall's agent requested that portions of the film be reshot to capitalize on her newly attained celebrity. Studio head Jack Warner agreed, and new material, such as the suggestive "horse racing" scene, was added (even though, contextually, it makes no sense whatsoever). Parts of the ending were also reshot, with Peggy Knudsen in the part of Mona Mars, as the original actress, Pat Clark, was unavailable. While there is only a difference of two minutes in the run time of both versions, there is over twenty minutes of different footage between them. In its revised form, The Big Sleep made its theatrical debut on 23 August 1946.
The theatrical release of the film is generally regarded as better. Although some consider it to be more confusing and more difficult to follow (it lacks, for example, a long, stilted conversation between Marlowe and the Los Angeles District Attorney in which the facts of the case thus far are discussed), most argue that the delight of seeing Bogart's Marlowe and Bacall's Vivian Rutledge spar verbally, flirt, and fall in love more than makes up for it.
For an example of this view, see Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" essay on the film [1].
[edit] Critical reaction
Film critic Roger Ebert, who entered the film in his list of 100 Great Movies, praises the film's writing:
- "Working from Chandler's original words and adding spins of their own, the writers (William Faulkner, Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett) wrote one of the most quotable of screenplays: It's unusual to find yourself laughing in a movie not because something is funny but because it's so wickedly clever."
The Washington Post Critics Corner calls the film "an unqualified masterpiece."
[edit] Re-release
In the late 1990s, a prerelease print -- Hawks' original cut -- was discovered in the UCLA Film and Television Archives. Apparently, this version had been released to the military to play for troops stationed in the south Pacific. A consortium of benefactors led by Hugh Hefner raised the necessary funds to restore the print, and it was released to specialty houses for a short theatrical run, along with a documentary comparing the differences between it and the studio release version. A DVD containing both versions of the film was released in 2000, along with an edited down version of the comparison documentary.
[edit] Awards
- Library of Congress (1997) U.S. National Film Registry.
[edit] Quotes
- Carmen Sternwood: You're not very tall are you?
Marlowe: Well, I, uh, I try to be.
- Vivian: So you do get up, I was beginning to think you worked in bed like Marcel Proust.
Marlowe: Who's he?
Vivian: You wouldn't know him, a French writer.
Marlowe: Come into my boudoir.
- Vivian: You go too far, Marlowe.
Marlowe: Those are harsh words to throw at a man, especially when he's walking out of your bedroom
- Vivian: You've forgotten one thing - me.
Marlowe: What's wrong with you?
Vivian: Nothing you can't fix.
- Marlowe: How did you happen to pick out this place?
Vivian: Maybe I wanted to hold your hand.
Marlowe: Oh, that can be arranged.
- Vivian: Tell me: What do you usually do when you're not working?
Marlowe: Oh, play the horses, fool around.
Vivian: No women?
Marlowe: I'm generally working on something most of the time.
Vivian: Could that be stretched to include me?
Marlowe: Well I like you. I've told you that before.
Vivian: I like hearing you say it. But you didn't do much about it.
Marlowe: Well, neither did you.
Vivian: Well, speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first, see if they're front-runners or come from behind, find out what their hole-card is. What makes them run.
Marlowe: Find out mine?
Vivian: I think so.
[edit] Trivia
- The author of the novel, Raymond Chandler, claimed that Martha Vickers gave an incredible performance as Carmen Sternwood. So much so that she completely overshadowed Lauren Bacall in her scenes. Unfortunately, this led the powers that be to edit the film in such a way that much of Vickers' performance ended up on the cutting room floor.[citation needed]
- The storyline of this film is so complicated and convoluted that even screenwriters William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman were forced to consult Raymond Chandler for advice. Unfortunately, according to legend, Chandler was as confused by the plot as the screenwriters.[citation needed]
- The henchman Sidney and Pete are named as a tribute to Bogie's frequent costars Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.
- The film was made during the age of censorship, wherein certain points were expected to be able to be picked up by the adult audience but missed by children. The sort of books that Geiger rents quite profitably are mentioned in the book as pornography, which at the time was illegal and associated with organized crime. The photograph of Carmen wearing a "Chinese dress" and sitting in a "Chinese chair" is also supposed to allude to this.
[edit] External links
- The Big Sleep at the Internet Movie Database
- 10 Shades of Noir
- Noir Film Analysis
- Roger Ebert's Review
- skyjude - movie legendsde:Tote schlafen fest
es:El sueño eterno (1946) fr:Le Grand Sommeil (film, 1946) it:Il grande sonno (film) ja:三つ数えろ
