The Big Sleep

Getting back to Bogie and Bacall, their second teaming was for 1946's The Big Sleep, an adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel, directed by Howard Hawks. By the time was released, they were married, though the film sat on the shelf for a while (war films were being rushed into release after the war was over, lest they lose popularity).

I admire this film a great deal, but I will admit it has a complicated plot. Bogart is Philip Marlowe, who is hired by a General Sternwood, a millionaire, to take care of a blackmailer who has gambling debts signed by his wayward daughter (Martha Vickers). It turns out that that daughter, who appears to hit on anything in pants, is involved in a pornography racket (this is only alluded to in the film. It's much more clear in the book). While Marlowe is rescuing her from the home of a photographer, he finds that man dead on the floor.

More bodies turn up, and it leads him to a gambler, Eddie Mars, who has some sort of hold over Vickers' older sister (Bacall). She and Bogart fall in love, though he can't completely trust her (a common trait in film noir). By the time everything is over one still may not who killed who, and that extends to Chandler himself. When the makers of the film asked him who killed the chauffeur, he wasn't quite sure (I think it had to have been Joe Brody). All of it connects to a missing man named Sean Reagan, and the film leaves it quite open as to actually killed him.

The film's lasting legacy, aside from the chemistry between the two leads (she now had equal co-billing with him) is the dialogue. The screenplay is credited to William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman, but some of the dialogue was written by Julius Epstein. Of course, much of it was transferred directly over from Chandler. The opening scene, in the greenhouse of Sternwood (he stays there because of health problems--he compares himself to a baby spider) is terrific. While Bogart is sweating, Sternwood enjoys watching him drink a glass of brandy, because he can't anymore. It is somewhat reminiscent of The Maltese Falcon, where honesty is appreciated. Sternwood asks Marlowe if he likes orchids. Most of us would answer yes just to get along, but Marlowe replies, "Not particularly," and Sternwood says, "Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, and their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption."

Later, in Bogart and Bacall's first scene together, there is verbal sparring, and Marlowe says of his manners, which Bacall has just impugned, "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."

There are many more scenes like this, such as two visits to bookstores, when Marlowe acts like a gay man asking about a copy of the third edition of Ben-Hur, or when he charms a young book clerk (Dorothy Malone, in a very early role) into sharing some information and a bottle of rye with him. When she pulls the window shade down I prefer to think they also have a nice fuck, but I guess that is left to the imagination.

I consider this the best film made of a Raymond Chandler novel (the bar is set high--there's Murder, My Sweet, Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, and the 1970s version of Farewell, My Lovely). This film has the snap and attitude of Chandler, the gloomy photography, and the menagerie of ne'er-do-wells. There's a certain viciousness to the film, but also a heart, as when Marlowe has to react to the death of Elisha Cook, Jr. (who was so memorable in The Maltese Falcon).

It is not the best private-eye film, though, and that title still belongs to The Maltese Falcon. In fact, it's hard to watch Bogart in this without thinking of that film, especially when he calls Bacall "angel," which he does to Mary Astor in the earlier film. Still, this is a classic film of the genre.