Film Review: The Big Sleep (1946)

Release Date: August 23rd, 1946
Directed by: Howard Hawks
Written by: William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman
Based on: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Music by: Max Steiner
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone, Elisha Cook Jr.

Warner Bros., 114 Minutes, 116 Minutes (pre-release)

Review:

“And I’m not crazy about yours. I didn’t ask to see you. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners, I don’t like them myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings. I don’t mind your ritzing me drinking your lunch out of a bottle. But don’t waste your time trying to cross-examine me.” – Philip Marlowe

There are few women that can match the presence of Humphrey Bogart on screen but I guess there is a reason why Lauren Bacall was in four pictures with Bogie and why they fell in love and got married, despite quite the age difference.

This is one of many Philip Marlowe stories put to celluloid in the 1940s. Strangely, a different actor played Marlowe in every movie as there wasn’t any sort of cohesiveness to the rights of the character. Different studios owned the rights to different books and some Marlowe movies even changed the character’s name to things like “The Falcon” and “Michael Shayne”. In The Big Sleep, we get to see Bogart become the character in what is arguably the best and most popular version of Marlowe.

Like typical film-noir and a Marlowe story, for that matter, this thing has a lot of solid twists and turns. You never really know where the roller coaster ride is going but it’s a hell of a lot of fun. In a nutshell, private dick Philip Marlowe is hired by a rich general with two beautiful daughters. One daughter has massive gambling debts, so Marlowe is brought in to help resolve this. The older sister, played by Lauren Bacall, assists Marlowe because she knows that the situation her little sister is in, is something bigger and deeper than what’s on the surface.

The Big Sleep is very complex and while it may, to a degree, work against it and make it hard to follow if you’re not completely tuned into it, it’s still well constructed and executed. I’m not sure how faithful of an adaptation it is to the book but it probably did its best in giving that story its life on screen. Complex stories are usually a bit easier to follow in a book than on screen, as there is a different sort of pacing and you have to be engaged by the book, giving it your full attention. But this isn’t too dissimilar to most film-noir films adapted from the crime novels of the day.

Bogart and Bacall always had fantastic chemistry. This is a great display of just how good each of them were and especially how good they were playing opposite of one another. Bogart is his typical cool self and Bacall has a serious sass that isn’t something most women can match.

Howard Hawks made one of the best Philip Marlowe pictures of all-time with The Big Sleep. It was probably easy directing the duo of Bogart and Bacall, however. Plus, he had the cinematography of Sidney Hickox at his disposal. Hickox being a real veteran with a lot of mileage under his belt at this point.

Rating: 9/10