The Big Sleep (1946 film)

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The Big Sleep
Image:Bigsleep2.JPG
Directed by	Howard Hawks
Produced by	Howard Hawks
Written by	Novel: Raymond Chandler Screenplay: William Faulkner Leigh Brackett Jules Furthman
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	1946 116 Min Director's Cut 1945 114 Min Theatrical Release
Country	Image:Flag of the United States.svg United States
Language	English
IMDb profile

The Big Sleep (1946), directed by Howard Hawks, is the first film version of Raymond Chandler's eponymous novel (1939), featuring Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the femme fatale. The Big Sleep is a prime example of the film noir genre. 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 preserved to the National Film Registry.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Background 3 Cast 4 Critical reaction 5 Re-release 6 Awards 7 Trivia 8 Notes and references 9 External links

[edit] Plot

Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) calls on new client General Sternwood (Charles Waldron) to resolve gambling debts owed by Carmen (Martha Vickers), his younger daughter, to a bookseller named Geiger. The elder daughter, Vivian (Lauren Bacall), suspects her father's true concern is learning the whereabouts of Sean Regan, his friend who had mysteriously disappeared a month earlier.

Marlowe finds Geiger shot dead in a rented house. An unidentified man escapes the murder scene, leaving Carmen inside, high on drugs. Marlowe finds a camera, with the film missing, in the house. Joe Brody (Louis Jean Heydt) has the film and is extorting money from Sternwood by threatening to implicate Carmen in Geiger's murder.

Later, Marlowe learns that Sternwood’s chauffeur, Owen Taylor, shot Geiger. Brody had clubbed Taylor unconscious and taken the film, leaving Taylor in the car that later driven off the pier. Marlowe's investigation then concentrates upon Sean Regan's whereabouts.

Eddie Mars (Joe Ridgely) owns the house in which Geiger lived and a casino frequented by Vivian. Marlowe had first met Mars while investigating Geiger's murder. They offer to help each other; however, Mars becomes unfriendly when Marlowe asks about Sean Regan, who presumably has run away with Mars’s wife. Vivian Sternwood is anxious for Marlowe's closing of the case after having resolved Geiger's murder, to stop his inquiries about Regan. Marlowe is curious why Mars isn’t much interested in finding his wife, and why so many people don't want him to find Regan.

It is implied that Mars convinced Vivian that he has proof that Carmen murdered Regan, and had been using that threat to compel Vivian’s cooperation. Meanwhile, Mars’ wife did not run away with Regan, but was hiding to appear as if she had. Mars hopes that will keep the police from considering him a suspect. Marlowe convinces Vivian to help him, instead of Eddie Mars, and Marlowe deduces that Carmen killed Sean Regan for jealousy of his love affair with Mars' wife. After a gun fight at the Geiger's house, Marlowe sets up Mars to be shot by his own henchmen. Marlowe makes Vivian promise to intern Carmen to a psychiatric hospital in exchange for not turning her in to the police.

[edit] Background

This version of The Big Sleep is remembered for its convoluted plot. Famous gossip is that during filming neither the director nor the screenwriters knew who killed chauffeur Owen Taylor or if he had killed himself. They sent a cable to Chandler who told this to a friend in a letter: "They sent me a wire... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either".^[1]

After its completion, Warner Bros. did not release The Big Sleep until they had released a backlog of war-related films, because the war was ending and the public might find them uninteresting, whereas The Big Sleep's subject was not time-sensitive. Attentive observers will note indications of the film's war-time production, such as ration stamps, period dialogue, pictures of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a woman taxi driver who says to Bogart: "I'm your girl".

At war's end, the "Bogie and Bacall" phenomenon, begun with To Have and Have Not and their marriage, was in full swing and Bacall's agent asked that portions of the film be re-shot to capitalize on her new celebrity. Producer Jack Warner agreed, and new scenes were added, such as the sexually suggestive race horse dialogue scene in Eddie Mars' casino (though it makes no sense story-wise). The re-shot ending featured Peggy Knudsen as "Mona Mars" because Pat Clark, the originally-cast actress, was unavailable. Consequently, because of the two versions created by the re-shooting, there is a substantial content difference of some twenty minutes between them, although the running time difference between the two versions is two minutes. The re-shot, revised version of 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 it is confusing and difficult to follow. For example, it omits a long conversation between Marlowe and the Los Angeles District Attorney where facts of the case, thus far, are exposited. 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.[1]

[edit] 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

Elisha Cook Jr. Harry Jones

[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."

Although the film's reception was overwhelmingly positive a number of critics, whilst commending the performance of the leading actors have criticised the film for its convoluted and difficult to follow plot. Carlo Cavagna said of the film: "Bogart and Bacall are so good together that the story's impenetrability doesn't matter much."[2]

Empire magazine added The Big Sleep to their Masterpiece collection in the October 2007 issue.

[edit] Re-release

In the late 1990s, a pre-release version — director Hawks's original cut — was found in the UCLA Film and Television Archives. That version was released to the military to play to troops in the South Pacific. Benefactors, led by businessman Hugh Hefner, raised the money to pay for its restoration, and the original version of The Big Sleep was released in art house cinemas for a short exhibition run, along with a comparative documentary about the cinematic and content differences between Hawks's film noir and Warner Bros.' movie star version. In 2000, a DVD was released with both versions and a briefer, edited version of the comparative documentary.

[edit] Awards

• Library of Congress (1997) U.S. National Film Registry.
• In 2003, AFI named the character Philip Marlowe the 32nd greatest hero in film.

[edit] Trivia

• Novelist Raymond Chandler said Martha Vickers (Carmen) overshadowed Lauren Bacall (Vivian) in their scenes together. Unfortunately, that led the producers to delete much of Vickers' performance to enhance Bacall's.^[2]
• Although Martha Vickers plays Lauren Bacall's younger sister, she is only eight months her junior.
• The henchmen Sidney and Pete are named in tribute to Bogart's frequent co-stars Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.^{[citation needed]}
• The Big Sleep was made in the age of Hays Office censorship, wherein it was expected that adults would understand certain story points that would be lost to children. In the novel, the books Geiger profitably rents are pornography, then illegal and associated with organized crime. The photograph of Carmen wearing a "Chinese dress" and sitting in a "Chinese chair" alludes to that.
• In the film, Joe Brody was killed by Carol Lundgren who believes he killed Geiger. In the novel, Lundgren is the homosexual lover of Geiger; that goes unmentioned in the film.
• In the novel, Marlowe finds pornographic photographs of Carmen and later finds her naked in his bed. In the film, the photographs show Carmen was at Geiger's house when he was killed (thus possibly implicating her in his murder). The novel's nude bedroom scene in Marlowe's apartment is altered to a clothed Carmen awaiting him in an armchair in the film.
• The authorised DVD is a double-sided, single-layer disc; the 1945 film noir version is in side-A, the 1946 movie star version is in side-B.
• The Big Sleep now is in the public domain because the copyright has expired.

[edit] Notes and references

[edit] External links

• The Big Sleep at the Internet Movie Database
• The Big Sleep at the TCM Movie Database
• 10 Shades of Noir
• Noir Film Analysis
• Roger Ebert's Review
• skyjude - movie legends

v • d • e Films directed by Howard Hawks

The Road to Glory • Fig Leaves • The Cradle Snatchers • Paid to Love • A Girl in Every Port • Fazil • The Air Circus • Trent's Last Case • The Dawn Patrol • The Criminal Code • La Foule hurle • Scarface • The Crowd Roars • Tiger Shark • Today We Live • The Prizefighter and the Lady • Viva Villa! • Twentieth Century • Barbary Coast • Ceiling Zero • Sutter's Gold • The Road to Glory • Come and Get It • Bringing Up Baby • Only Angels Have Wings • His Girl Friday • Sergeant York • Ball of Fire • Air Force • The Outlaw • To Have and Have Not • The Big Sleep • Red River • A Song Is Born • I Was a Male War Bride • The Thing from Another World • The Big Sky • Monkey Business • O. Henry's Full House • Gentlemen Prefer Blondes • Land of the Pharaohs • Rio Bravo • Hatari! • Man's Favorite Sport? • Red Line 7000 • El Dorado • Rio Lobo

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