The Big Sleep (1946 film)

The Big Sleep
theatrical poster
Directed by	Howard Hawks
Written by	Novel: Raymond Chandler Screenplay: William Faulkner Leigh Brackett Jules Furthman
Produced by	Howard Hawks
Starring	Humphrey Bogart Lauren Bacall
Cinematography	Sidney Hickox
Edited by	Christian Nyby
Music by	Max Steiner
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date	August 23, 1946
Running time	115 minutes (released cut) 116 minutes (re-released original cut)
Country	Template:Film US
Language	English

The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. It stars Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the female lead in a film about the "process of a criminal investigation, not its results." William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman co-wrote the screenplay.

In 1997, the U.S. Library of Congress deemed this film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," and added it to the National Film Registry.

Plot

Private detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) calls on new client General Sternwood (Charles Waldron) at his Los Angeles mansion. The wealthy general wants to resolve gambling debts his daughter, Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers), owes to bookseller, Arthur Gwynn Geiger. As Marlowe is leaving, General Sternwood's older daughter, Mrs. Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall), stops him. She suspects her father's true motive for calling in a detective is to find his friend Sean Regan, who had mysteriously disappeared a month earlier.

Marlowe goes to Geiger's "rare book shop." Agnes Lozelle (Sonia Darrin), Geiger's assistant, minds the shop; the detritus of an illegal pornography operation. Marlowe follows Geiger to his house and hears a gunshot and a woman scream. Breaking into the house, he finds Geiger's body and an extremely drunk Carmen, as well as a hidden camera with an empty cartridge.

Vivian comes to Marlowe's office with scandalous pictures of Carmen she received with a blackmail demand for the negatives. Marlowe returns to Geiger's bookstore, and discovers that they are packing up the store. Marlowe follows a car leaving the bookstore to the apartment of Joe Brody (Louis Jean Heydt), a gambler who previously blackmailed General Sternwood. Marlowe returns to Geiger's house where he finds Carmen. She initially claims ignorance about the murder of Geiger but then insists Brody killed Geiger. They are interrupted by the owner of the home, small-time gangster Eddie Mars (John Ridgely).

Marlowe follows Vivian to Joe Brody's apartment, where they join Brody and Agnes, and later, Carmen, who wants her photos. Marlowe takes the photos and sends Vivian and Carmen home. After Brody admits he was blackmailing both General Sternwood and Vivian, he is suddenly shot and killed; the assailant flees. Marlowe follows and apprehends Carol Lundgren, Geiger's former driver, who has killed Brody in revenge for Geiger's death.

Marlowe visits Mars' casino, where he asks about Regan, who is supposed to have run off with Mars' wife. Mars is evasive and tells Marlowe that Vivian is running up debts in his casino. Marlowe unsuccessfully presses Vivian on her connection with Mars, then returns home to find Carmen waiting for him. She admits she didn't like Regan and mentions that Mars calls Vivian frequently. In the morning, Marlowe learns that Regan has been found in Mexico.

Harry Jones (Elisha Cook, Jr.), an associate of Agnes, conveys an offer from her to reveal the location of Mars' wife for $200. However, when Marlowe goes to meet Jones, Canino, a hired killer, poisons him. Marlowe meets Agnes where she reveals that she's seen Mona Mars near Realito by an auto repair shop. In Realito, Canino attacks Marlowe and he wakes to find himself locked up with Mona and Vivian. Mona leaves when Marlowe tells her about Jones' death. Vivian fears for Marlowe's life and frees him, allowing him to get to his car and his gun. Marlowe then kills Canino and they leave together. During the drive back to Geiger's bungalow, Vivian unconvincingly tries to claim she killed Sean Regan.

When they arrive back, Marlowe calls Eddie Mars and says that he is still in Realito at the payphone. They arrange to meet at Geiger's house, giving Marlowe ten minutes to prepare. When Mars arrives, Marlowe holds him at gunpoint. Mars admits that he covered up Carmen's murder of Regan and was blackmailing Vivian. Mars runs out, but his men, waiting to ambush Marlowe, shoot and kill him. Marlowe calls the police, telling them that Mars killed Regan.

Cast

• Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe
• Lauren Bacall as Vivian Sternwood Rutledge
• John Ridgely as Eddie Mars
• Martha Vickers as Carmen Sternwood
• Dorothy Malone as Acme Bookstore proprietress
• Peggy Knudsen as Mona Mars
• Regis Toomey as Chief Inspector Bernie Ohls
• Charles Waldron as General Sternwood
• Charles D. Brown as Norris
• Bob Steele as Lash Canino
• Elisha Cook, Jr. as Harry Jones
• Louis Jean Heydt as Joe Brody
• Sonia Darrin as Agnes Lowzier, the salesgirl at A.J. Geiger bookstore (uncredited)
• Ben Welden as Pete, Mars' flunky (uncredited)
• Tom Fadden as Sidney, Mars' flunky (uncredited)
• Trevor Bardette as Art Huck (uncredited)
• Theodore von Eltz as Arthur Gwynn Geiger (uncredited)

Production and release

The Big Sleep is known for its convoluted plot. During filming, allegedly neither the director nor the screenwriters knew whether chauffeur Owen Taylor was murdered or had killed himself. They sent a cable to Chandler, who told a friend in a later letter: "They sent me a wire ... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either".

After its completion, Warner Bros. did not release The Big Sleep until they had turned out a backlog of war-related films. Because the war was ending, the studio feared the public might lose interest in the films, while The Big Sleep's subject was not time-sensitive. Attentive observers will note indications of the film's wartime production, such as ration stamps (including references to dead bodies as "red points," referring to wartime meat rationing), period dialogue, pictures of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a woman taxi driver who says to Bogart: "I'm your girl."

The "Bogie and Bacall" phenomenon, which had begun with To Have and Have Not and their marriage, was in full swing by the end of the war. Bacall's agent, Charles K. Feldman, asked that portions of the film be reshot to capitalize on their chemistry and counteract the negative press Bacall had received for her 1945 performance in Confidential Agent. Producer Jack Warner agreed, and new scenes, such as the sexually suggestive racehorse dialogue, were added.

The reshot ending featured Peggy Knudsen as "Mona Mars" because Pat Clark, the originally cast actress, was unavailable. Because of the two versions created by the reshooting, there is a substantial difference in content of some twenty minutes between them, although the difference in running time is two minutes. The reshot, revised The Big Sleep was released on 23 August 1946.

The cinematic release of The Big Sleep is regarded as more successful than the pre-release version (see below), although some complain it is confusing and difficult to follow. This may be due in part to the omission of a long conversation between Marlowe and the Los Angeles District Attorney where facts of the case, thus far, are laid out. Yet movie-star aficionados prefer it to the film noir version because they consider the Bogart-Bacall appearances more important than a well-told story. For an example of this point of view, see Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" essay on the film.

Novelist Raymond Chandler said Martha Vickers (Carmen) overshadowed Lauren Bacall (Vivian) in their scenes together, which led the producers to delete much of Vickers' performance to enhance Bacall's.

Effects of the Hays Code

Killer's identity

There is some confusion as to the identity of the killer. In the novel Carmen is definitely the culprit, but that would have made Vivian, Marlowe's love interest, an accessory to murder, which would have run afoul of the Hollywood Production Code. Hence, the film edits the original story, to imply that Mars killed Regan himself because Regan was romancing Mars's wife. He then convinced Vivian that her sister committed the crime during one of her mental blackouts so that he could blackmail the Sternwood family.

Sexuality

Another primary focus of the Hays Office censorship polices was restricting, if not prohibiting outright, sexual themes. In the novel, Geiger is selling pornography, then illegal and associated with organized crime, and is also a homosexual having a relationship with Lundgren. Likewise, Carmen is described as being nude in Geiger's house . To ensure the film would be approved by the Hays Office, some changes had to be made.

Carmen had to be fully dressed, and the pornographic elements could only be alluded to with cryptic references to photographs of Carmen wearing a "Chinese dress" and sitting in a "Chinese chair". The sexual orientation of Geiger and Lundgren goes unmentioned in the film because homosexuality was prohibited.

Reception

1946 version

At the time of its 1946 release, Bosley Crowther said the film leaves the viewer "confused and dissatisfied", points out that Bacall is a "dangerous looking female" ..."who still hasn't learned to act" and notes:

The Big Sleep is one of those pictures in which so many cryptic things occur amid so much involved and devious plotting that the mind becomes utterly confused. And, to make it more aggravating, the brilliant detective in the case is continuously making shrewd deductions which he stubbornly keeps to himself. What with two interlocking mysteries and a great many characters involved, the complex of blackmail and murder soon becomes a web of utter bafflement. Unfortunately, the cunning script-writers have done little to clear it at the end.

Time called the film "wakeful fare for folks who don't care what is going on, or why, so long as the talk is hard and the action harder" but insists that "the plot's crazily mystifying, nightmare blur is an asset, and only one of many"; it calls Bogart "by far the strongest" of its assets and says Hawks, "even on the chaste screen...manages to get down a good deal of the glamorous tawdriness of big-city low life, discreetly laced with hints of dope addiction, voyeurism and fornication."

1997 release of the 1945 original cut

Film critic Roger Ebert, who included the film in his list of "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.

Note that the above quote is not specific to the 1945 version but, rather, is in reference to both films. In fact, Ebert preferred the 1946 version. He stated:

The new scenes [of the 1946 version] add a charge to the film that was missing in the 1945 version; this is a case where "studio interference" was exactly the right thing. The only reason to see the earlier version is to go behind the scenes, to learn how the tone and impact of a movie can be altered with just a few scenes... As for the 1946 version that we have been watching all of these years, it is one of the great film noirs, a black-and-white symphony that exactly reproduces Chandler's ability, on the page, to find a tone of voice that keeps its distance, and yet is wry and humorous and cares.

In a 1997 review, Eric Brace of The Washington Post wrote that the 1945 original had a "sightly slower pace than the one released a year later, and a touch less zingy interplay between Bogart and Bacall, but it’s still an unqualified masterpiece."

Awards and honors

In 2003, AFI named protagonist Philip Marlowe the 32nd greatest hero in film. Empire magazine added The Big Sleep to their Masterpiece collection in the October 2007 issue.

Re-release

In the late 1990s, a pre-release version — director Hawks's original cut — was found in the UCLA Film and Television Archive. That version had been released to the military to play to troops in the South Pacific. Benefactors, led by American magazine publisher Hugh Hefner, raised the money to pay for its restoration, and the original version of The Big Sleep was released in art-house cinemas in 1997 for a short exhibition run, along with a comparative documentary about the cinematic and content differences between Hawks's film noir and the Warner Brothers "movie star" version.

DVD

The authorized DVD is a double-sided, single-layer disc; with the 1946 movie star version on side-A, and the 1945 film noir version on side-B, with an edited version of the 1997 comparative documentary.

Impact and influence

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, a 2011 science fiction/noir novel by Australian author Andrez Bergen, heavily references both Chandler's original novel of The Big Sleep and Hawks' film version. The final page of the novel paraphrases the closing dialogue that takes place between Marlowe and Vivian in the 1946 movie.

External links

• The Big Sleep at IMDb
• The Big Sleep at the TCM Movie Database
• The Big Sleep at AllMovie
• The Big Sleep at Rotten Tomatoes