This was first posted at Brewster's Millions
This classic film noir has very few of techniques generally associated with noir. It contains no skewed camera angles; and though it is darkly lit, it is not overcome with murky, obscuring shadows. The hero is not down-and-out, poor, or desperate. There is no retrospective narration, or flashbacks. Yet, the Big Sleep is widely considered to be one of the very best of this genre. It is a cynical, perverse, murderous world filled with loads of confusing action and unknown motives. It is, in fact, one of the great films of one of the screens greatest actors (for my personal top 10 actors list, click here), and most talented directors.
It was directed by Howard Hawks fresh off of the successful pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not. The two star here again and it is easy to see why they made another two films together. Based on a Raymond Chandler novel of the same name, many people complain that this film is incomprehensible. Somewhat famously it is reported that Bogart and Hawks, after arguing over who killed one of the characters, called up Chandler to get the correct answer. Chandler didn’t have the slightest idea, for the novel is rather vague on this point. It’s true that both the novel and film leave many plot points as to who did what to whom more than unclear, but there is so much style in both that it’s hard to make a convincing argument against them.
A good deal of the confusion within the film comes from the production codes in effect at the time it was produced. Chandler’s novel deals with murder, homosexuality, heterosexuality, and pornography. At the time, these things were deemed unfit to show on a movie screen and so Hawks had to hint at them using various subtle methods. For instance, when Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers) is found by detective Phillip Marlow (Bogart) in the novel she is completely nude and sitting posed for a hidden camera. Since pornography is explicitly against code, in the movie she is dressed in a silky, Japanese gown. There is still a hidden camera, and its missing film becomes a catalyst for much of the action in the film. We must infer from the exotic nature of the gown that there was more than just pictures of a woman in a gown going on. There are many similar instances in the film like this. For an audience member who has not read the book, they must pay close attention to the subtext, or the film will seem baffling.
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Article comments
1 - Quack Corleone
Agreed! The Big Sleep is one of my favourite films, and one that never loses its freshness or edge. Every scene is great, each performance memorable, and, as you say, the whole thing is filled with a ton of subtext. And to think it all came about from a script by William Faulkner, who neither understood Chandler's book nor ever truly grasped the craft of screenwriting. A classic!
2 - Bill Wallo
It's a classic. I love it. The script may make an incomprehensible mess of Chandler's narrative, but hey, who's complaining?
3 - Purple Tigress
I think zee spelling is "Bacall."
4 - Mat
D'oh! Thanks Purple Tigress. I know how to spell her name, but my fingers kept typing the wrong thing. I doubled checked the copy, but forgot to look at the title.
5 - Rodney Welch
Faulkner was one of three writers, and it is anyone's guess how much he influenced the final project. Quack is right that Faulkner never really had his chops as a screenwriter, a point his latest biographer, Jay Parini, also makes. The other two writers, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman, were highly experienced old hands; Ms. Brackett, incidentally, was a former sci-fi author who later co-wrote The Empire Strikes Back with Lawrence Kasdan. In the end, though, I'm not sure if any of them deserve more credit than Chandler: a lot of the dialogue is lifted virtually line for line from the book.