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| The beautiful, alluring original poster for Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep |
QUICK REVIEW:
Philip Marlowe, a private detective, gets hired by an old general to get to the bottom of an extortion affair, but the case proves complicated, and the two daughters of the employer do not exactly make the sailing smoother...
The Big Sleep is a fantastic film noir, and for me a tad better than The Maltese Falcon (1941), the other classic noir which is always mentioned as one of the greatest ever. This is because Sleep is more uncompromising in that it doesn't seem to alter its characters to suit any plot ends at all.
The film is dirty and full of murders and twists, - despite submitting to the rigid Hays Code censorship regime of the period. The snappy, sexy dialogue is worth staying totally silent for for the entire playtime; the screenplay, based on Raymond Chandler's novel from 1939, is deftly concocted by William Falkner (The Southerner (1945)), Leigh Brackett (Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)) and Jules Furthman (To Have and Have Not (1944).
The film is infamously puzzling, with no real denouement, and one of the funny trivias about The Big Sleep relates to the original author, Chandler's equal confusion and ignorance as to any resolution to his story. About a wire query sent by the screenwriters about one of the intricate plot's ends, Chandler later confided to a friend: "They sent me a wire ... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either".
Click to enlarge this poster that promises 'the violence-screen's all time rocker-shocker' (whatever that is...)
The central allure of the film, is, of course, its stars:
Humphrey Bogart (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)) and Lauren Bacall (To Have and Have Not (1944)) were growing flaming hot by the '46-re-release of Sleep, (a more straight forward, but less sexual and lauded version was released in '45), both as a couple on- and off-screen. Perhaps the best movie star couple ever, they both exuded charisma, attraction and sex en masse, and sparks fly right and left when they take the screen in The Big Sleep together.
Lauren Bacall, only around 20 years old when the film was shot in 1944, already had the looks of sophistication and an almost uncanny experience in her eyes
Cat-eyed Bacall, enormously feminine and masculine at the same time, plays one of the deadliest femme fatales ever in The Big Sleep, possibly the best film noir ever made. It is a film that simply reeks of SEX without having a single sex scene in it. A rare, electrifying film-experience not to be missed.
The film noir genre label was coined by French critics in love with the dark, American detective crime pictures of the 40s and 50s, just as they were about to kick off their French New Wave with several films that were inspired by the anarchism, sex appeal and freshness of films like The Big Sleep.
The great Howard Hawks, who directed the film, was not praised for it at the time, when most critics snorted at the convoluted plot. He received his only Oscar, an honorary award, in 1975, 5 years after he had directed his last film. In his impressive career, he also directed great films like Scarface (1932), To Have and Have Not (1944) and Rio Bravo (1959).
Here follows some steaming hot pictures of Bogie and Bacall from the film. Click to enlarge:
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Watch the funny original trailer here, in which Bogart goes to the library
Budget: Unknown
Box office: Unknown
= Unknown
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