The Big Sleep (1946)

The Big Sleep
Directed by Howard Hawks
1946/USA
Warner Bros.
Repeat viewing
#189 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Vivian: Why did you have to go on?

Marlowe: Too many people told me to stop.[/box]

Movies have taken a back seat to life lately and when life rears its ugly head there is nobody better than Bogart for a little boost.  This is a fun but perplexing adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel.

Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) is hired by wealthy General Sternwood to investigate a blackmail plot against his daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers).  Sternwood’s other daughter Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) attempts to keep him off the case.  Not to be deterred, Marlowe comes across a series of murders and is lucky to escape with his own life.  With Elisha Cook, Jr. as a would-be informant.

The Big Sleep has a notoriously complicated plot, even for a film noir.  It is so complicated, in fact, that when writers William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett asked Chandler who killed a chauffeur in love with Carmen, even Chandler couldn’t figure it out.  I’m hazy on most of the story.  Despite the fantastic repartee between Bogart and Bacall, this detracts a bit from my enjoyment of the film.  Nevertheless, it is well worth seeing.  It is probably the only film in which Bogart plays a James Bond like sex symbol, with all the girls he meets swooning (see the second clip).

Trailer

Clip – Dorothy Malone and Humphrey Bogart get to know each other in a bookstore