Review of The Big Sleep (1946) by Aaron E — 21 Jun 2010

The Big Sleep is true to the spirit of Raymond Chandler's masterpiece, if not the particulars. As in the novel, the plot is convoluted to say the least, although the excellent screenwriting team - including William Faulkner - wrote out some of the more frustrating contrivances. The writers crafted a script which retains much of Chandler's lyricism, and includes some taut dialogue of their own. The noir cinematography is effective, though it does little justice to Chandler's poetic and original descriptions. The romance between Marlowe and Vivian (played by extremely bankable stars) is considerably more developed in the film; at the end of the book, they are practically adversaries, at the end of the movie, they are lovers.

The standout performance here is, of course, Humphrey Bogart's portrayal of Philip Marlowe. He inhabits Marlowe's lightning wit, insolence and masked honour so perfectly that even the most unlikely one-liner sounds natural. The female lead, Lauren Bacall, seems slightly less comfortable as the part-playful, part-ruthless Vivian Rutledge, though she infuses her with a sultry charm and has great chemistry with Bogart. Little can be said of Martha Vickers' Carmen Sternwood: she is visibly absent compared to the novel, though when she's on screen she portrays Carmen's unsettling blend of sexuality and naivety perfectly. Charles Waldron is poor as General Sternwood. He reads his lyrical monologue like a rookie Shakespearean actor who doesn't really understand what he's saying, and he never convinces as a man who is obviously on death's border in the book.

The most impressive feature of this film is not the acting or the cinematography, but the screenplay. Although the central mystery is even more confusing and badly resolved than the notoriously convoluted novel, the depths of Philip Marlowe's character are better explored. His complex psyche is summarized in one of the earliest exchanges:

"You're not a tall man.".

"I try to be.".

Marlowe is deeply flawed: he is a drunken, disrespectful misogynist who often flouts the law (but then, so are the police), but he has a deeply rooted moral code which leads him to hunt for General Sternwood's surrogate son. In contrast to a certain other iconic detective, he is not a genius, doesn't know Proust (or at least affects not to: he knows Peter Pan), and he solves his cases not by noticing some minute clue the police missed and building a case around it, but by using his guile to analyze the people involved.

Much of the overtly sexual nature of the novel is removed, yet there is more innuendo and romance. Carmen is not blackmailed for making pornography, but because she was present at the scene of the central murder. She is not found naked in Marlowe's bed, but clothed in his chair. On the other hand, there is some sexually charged dialogue between Marlowe and Vivian that was not present in the novel, and they have an actual relationship unlike in the novel, where Marlowe only kisses her to extract information. This is most likely because of the superstar status of Bogart and Bacall at the time. Could we have a movie with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie today where they don't end up getting together?

The Big Sleep, like the novel it is based on, has a confusing, barely resolved central mystery, yet is redeemed by the strength of its writing and a compelling protagonist.