Movie Review – The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep (1946)
Written by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman
Directed by Howard Hawks

Much about The Big Sleep makes it an American film of immense historical importance. It was one of many fantastic films directed by the great Howard Hawks. It has that snappy, punchy energy all his films embody while still staying to the ideas of the noir. It was co-written by American writing legend William Faulkner. Additionally, the criminally underrated writer Leigh Brackett co-wrote it with Faulkner. She would work on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back and penned my favorite Robert Altman film, The Long Goodbye. In front of the camera, we have Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall. Despite being made in 1944, the film was delayed with plans to release once World War II was officially concluded, and in the interim, these two acting legends got married. With all of these potent elements, how’s the movie?

LA private eye Phillip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) is called to the lavish mansion of General Sternwood to serve as a mediator to resolve debts between Sternwood’s daughter Carmen and a bookseller named Geiger. Once the job is explained and Marlowe is on his way out, he’s stopped by Sternwood’s other daughter, Vivian (Lauren Bacall). She tells Marlowe she thinks her father hired him so he could later send the detective searching for the man’s missing protege, who disappeared a month earlier. Marlowe continues on to Geiger’s bookstore, where he hears a gunshot. Bursting inside, he discovers Geiger dead, and Carmen drugged & unconscious. Marlowe decides to return Carmen to her home, but Geiger’s body is missing when the private eye returns to the bookstore. Hours later, he discovers that Sternwood’s personal driver has been found dead; his body and the car have both been tossed off Lido Pier. 

Vivian shows up at Marlowe’s office with scandalous photos of her sister that have been sent to her with blackmail demands. The rabbit hole gets deeper as Marlowe learns more about Sternwood’s past and previous blackmail attempts from other unscrupulous sorts. Vivian is running up gambling debts, which doesn’t help, and Carmen becomes increasingly volatile, in one instance threatening Marlow and in another trying to seduce him. When various parties become aware of the detective’s presence in all of this, he becomes a target, getting beaten up by men who would rather he slink back to where he came from. 

It can be hard to contextualize an older piece of media in the current oversaturated landscape. We lose touch with the historical roots that connect today’s films with those of the past. When Altman released The Long Goodbye in 1973, it was met with tremendous ire by many fans of Bogart’s interpretation, which was seen as the quintessential Marlowe. I wonder if anyone would notice if The Long Goodbye were to come out today. However, analyzing how this character is portrayed across multiple films is a valuable effort. 

It informs us about how ideas surrounding masculinity are constantly in flux despite what many of the reactionary voices of today might tell us. The Big Sleep is one of several films that defined the image of the private eye in our collective consciousness. He’s never too surprised by anything, always able to engage in loaded banter with a gorgeous dame, and can take a punch just as well as throw one. Is this an accurate picture of what it is like to be a man? Of course not. But this type of story was being devoured by young men in America like crazy at the time. Many wanted to be like Marlowe. Understanding what appeals to them helps us better understand how ideas of masculinity are communicated in the culture. It can also reveal gaps where other types of men are not represented in film & television.

What makes that so much more interesting is that Bogart had a disability that became a part of what made him so unique in a sea of movie stars. He has scarring in his mouth, which caused him to speak with a lisp. The lisp has become so closely associated with caricatures of queer men, and it becomes more pronounced when an actor plays the role with heightened femininity. Bogart is certainly not feminine in his acting style, yet the lisp is there and becomes something else through his performance.

It’s an affection that doesn’t project a weakness but a differentiation from every other guy in the story. It also challenges the popular notion that disabilities are negative things. As someone with a disability, it is not fun, but it also gives me a unique perspective. I have to guess that as a child, Bogart felt insecure about his lisp, which likely led him to not want to speak too much. When you don’t talk a lot, you get really good at observing people; you search for those you can trust and be vulnerable around. Acting is a profession that lives and dies on the observation of people, so I suspect those formative years served Bogart well. 

The Big Sleep is not a film about the result but the process. There’s a famous anecdote where Bogart came on set and wanted to know if the driver killed himself or was murdered. He’d read the novel and the script, and neither made that clear. Hawks phoned the book’s author, Raymond Chandler, and even he wasn’t exactly sure about that plot point. We can interpret this to mean that the story uses the murders as the catalyst to tell a story about the characters. There are plenty of unsolved murders, but it can be more fascinating to follow someone trying to make sense of it all than for the story to actually make sense of it all. I point out Bong Joon-ho’s Memories of Murder and Fincher’s Zodiac as other beautiful examples.

What is compelling about the film then and today is the chemistry between Bogart and Bacall. If you’ve seen their movies, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. They are excellent together on screen; we can infer this is authentic chemistry between them. The Big Sleep is a picture heavily censored by the Hays Code; it was apparently far more direct with its characters’ sexual desires, and those got buried in very obvious innuendo. Take this exchange, for example:

Bacall – “Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them work out a little first. See if they’re front-runners or come from behind. I’d say you don’t like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a lead, take a little breather in the back stretch, and then come home free.”

Bogart – “You’ve got a touch of class, but I don’t know how far you can go.”

Bacall – “A lot depends on who’s in the saddle.”

For only being in her early 20s, Bacall feels more confident than I do in my early 40s. She was able to project the sense of a self-assured, powerful woman. She’s not someone chasing after Marlowe; she’s his equal, able to verbally spar with him whenever he wants a go at it. It’s also a trademark of Howard Hawks’ films, as we saw earlier this year with Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby.

Bogart can deliver lines that might sound silly from another actor’s mouth and make them the funniest, wittiest thing you’ve ever heard. When asked about his encounter with Carmen when she tried to seduce him he says: “She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.” That line alone should have warranted the writer a massive bonus. It perfectly describes the nature of the encounter and how Marlowe feels about it. She was coming on to him aggressively, but he wasn’t even giving her signals that he was into it.

Regarding the story, I just watched this a few nights ago, and I can’t remember the solution to the crime. I don’t know whodunnit. But that’s not why the film endures. We get so caught up in the plot of a movie these days, searching for plot holes and trying to make sense of everything. Sometimes a good film doesn’t give a shit about the plot; it uses it to propel the characters into interesting situations. By the time you get to the end of The Big Sleep, the parade of lowlifes and scoundrels goes around the block. You can sit down and map out who did what to whom and why, but you can also enjoy the movie without all that.

The core theme of the film centers on how wealthy, influential people make themselves vulnerable by allowing their children to become spoiled, privileged brats. The children become irresponsible adults who think their money can get them anything and anywhere. But that sort of attitude leads to crossing paths with deeply nefarious figures who have ways of getting that money to themselves. Marlowe becomes entangled in the giant mess that Sternwood and his daughters have created, another person suffering because of these nepotistic fools.