The Big Sleep
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	116 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

The Big Sleep (1946) is the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. It stars Humphrey Bogart as the hard-boiled private-eye Philip Marlowe and his eventual real-life wife Lauren Bacall as the femme fatale. The film was directed by Howard Hawks and is an example of the film noir genre. William Faulkner cowrote the screenplay with Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman. Image File history File links Big Sleep movie poster This is a copyrighted poster. ... Howard Hawks Howard Hawks (May 30, 1896 – December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and writer of the classic Hollywood era. ... Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an author of crime stories and novels. ... William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American novelist and poet whose works feature his native state of Mississippi. ... Leigh Brackett (December 7, 1915 - March 18, 1978), was a writer of fantasy and science fiction, mystery novels and - best known to the general public - Hollywood screenplays, most notably The Big Sleep (1945), Rio Bravo (1959), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). ... Jules Furthman (March 5, 1888 - September 22, 1966) was a magazine and newspaper writer before working as a screenwriter. ... Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957) was an iconic American actor of legendary fame who retained his legacy after death. ... Lauren Bacall (born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924) is an American film and stage actress. ... Actor John Ridgely in The Big Sleep John Ridgely (September 6, 1909 – January 18, 1968) was an American film character actor with over 100 film credits. ... Martha Vickers in The Big Sleep Martha Vickers (May 28, 1925 - November 2, 1971) was a film actress who appeared in the 1946 film The Big Sleep playing Carmen Sternwood, sexy younger sister to Lauren Bacall. ... Promotional photo for Malone Dorothy Malone (born January 30, 1925) is an American actress. ... Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner (born May 10, 1888 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary; died December 28, 1971 in Hollywood, California) was an Austrian-American composer of music for theater production shows and films. ... Sidney Hickox (July 15, 1895 - May 16, 1982) was a film cinematographer. ... Warner Bros. ... August 23 is the 235th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (236th in leap years), with 130 days remaining. ... Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an author of crime stories and novels. ... 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Big Sleep is a 1939 novel by Raymond Chandler, with two film versions, one filmed in 1946, and another filmed in 1978. ... Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957) was an iconic American actor of legendary fame who retained his legacy after death. ... Ed Bishop had the title role in BBC Radios The Adventures of Philip Marlowe. ... Lauren Bacall (born Betty Joan Perske on September 16, 1924) is an American film and stage actress. ... This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ... Howard Hawks Howard Hawks (May 30, 1896 – December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and writer of the classic Hollywood era. ... This still from The Big Combo (1955) demonstrates the visual style of film noir at its most extreme. ... William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American novelist and poet whose works feature his native state of Mississippi. ... Leigh Brackett (December 7, 1915 - March 18, 1978), was a writer of fantasy and science fiction, mystery novels and - best known to the general public - Hollywood screenplays, most notably The Big Sleep (1945), Rio Bravo (1959), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). ... Jules Furthman (March 5, 1888 - September 22, 1966) was a magazine and newspaper writer before working as a screenwriter. ...

Plot

Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) visits his new client, General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), presumably to take care of some gambling debts of his younger daughter, Carmen (Martha Vickers), to a bookseller named Geiger. The older daughter, Vivian (Lauren Bacall), suspects that her father is more concerned with finding out what happened to employee Sean Regan, who had mysteriously disappeared about a month prior. Ed Bishop had the title role in BBC Radios The Adventures of Philip Marlowe. ... Martha Vickers in The Big Sleep Martha Vickers (May 28, 1925 - November 2, 1971) was a film actress who appeared in the 1946 film The Big Sleep playing Carmen Sternwood, sexy younger sister to Lauren Bacall. ...

Bogart and Bacall in The Big Sleep (1946)

Shortly afterwards, Marlowe finds Geiger shot dead in his home. An unidentified man flees the scene, leaving Carmen inside, high on drugs. Marlowe finds a camera in the house with the film missing. Joe Brody (Louis Jean Heydt) has the film and is attempting to extort money from Sternwood by threatening to implicate Carmen in the murder. The Big Sleep This is a screenshot of a copyrighted movie or television program. ... The Big Sleep This is a screenshot of a copyrighted movie or television program. ...

Later, it is revealed that Sternwood’s chauffeur, Owen Taylor, shot Geiger. Brody merely clubbed Taylor unconscious and took the film. He left Taylor in the car, which was later driven off the pier, leading to a watery death. This is the plot point that famously left the director, the screenwriters, and even Raymond Chandler himself baffled. None of them could figure out who had killed Taylor. Also not developed is Geiger’s murder, nor the later murder of Brody by Geiger’s shadow, Carol Lundgren (presumably, among other reasons, because Lundgren is a man and Geiger's homosexual partner - not something the censors would have permitted in 1946). The story soon focuses on the mystery at the heart of the film: the whereabouts of Sean Regan.

Eddie Mars (Joe Ridgely) owns the house that Geiger lived in, and also owns a gambling establishment frequented by Vivian. Marlowe first meets Mars while he is investigating the Geiger murder, which had also taken Mars by surprise. The two offer each other their help if needed. However, Mars becomes decidedly less friendly when Marlowe asks about Sean Regan, who had presumably run off with Mars’ wife. Vivian too is anxious for Marlowe to close the case after the resolution of the Geiger matter, and to stop him from inquiring about Regan. Marlowe is curious why Mars isn’t more interested in finding his wife, and why so many people don't want him to find Regan.

It is later revealed, at least implicitly, that Mars convinced Vivian that he has proof that Carmen had murdered Regan, and had been using this to compel Vivian’s cooperation. Meanwhile, Mars’ wife in fact did not run off with Regan at all, but was merely hiding out to make it look like she did. Mars hopes that this will keep the cops from making him a suspect. Marlowe eventually convinces Vivian to help him instead of Mars, and the two of them figure out that it was Mars who killed Sean Regan after all. Mars is then mistakenly shot by his own men after a final shootout at the Geiger house.

Background

The film is fondly remembered for its extremely convoluted plot. A famous story tells that, during filming, the director and screenwriters could not figure out who had killed chauffeur Owen Taylor or if he had commited suicide. They sent a cable to the author. Chandler later relates this story to a friend in a letter and he recalls "They sent me a wire... asking me, and dammit I didn't know either" .^[1]

After the film was completed, it was shelved while Warner Bros. worked to release a backlog of war-related films. It was decided that since the war was drawing to a close, public interest in these films would be substantially less after its conclusion, whereas The Big Sleep had no such time sensitivity requiring a more immediate release. (A careful eye will spot many indications of The Big Sleep being shot during the war, such as ration stamps and dialogue, and pictures of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. There is also a female cabbie who states "I'm your girl".) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882–April 12, 1945), 32nd President of the United States, the longest-serving holder of the office and the only man to be elected President more than twice, was one of the central figures of 20th century history. ...

Once the war ended, the Bogie & Bacal phenomenon caused by To Have and Have Not as well as their subsequent marriage, was in full swing. Bacall's agent requested that portions of the film be reshot to capitalize on her newly attained celebrity. Studio head Jack Warner agreed, and new material, such as the suggestive "horse racing" scene, was added (even though, contextually, it makes no sense whatsoever). Parts of the ending were also reshot, with Peggy Knudsen in the part of Mona Mars, as the original actress, Pat Clark, was unavailable. While there is only a difference of two minutes in the run time of both versions, there is over twenty minutes of different footage between them. In its revised form, The Big Sleep made its theatrical debut on 23 August 1946. To Have and Have Not is a 1944 thriller romance war adventure film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall that is nominally based on the novel To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway. ... This article is about Jack Warner, the head of Warner Brothers. ...

The theatrical release of the film is generally regarded as better. Although some consider it to be more confusing and more difficult to follow (it lacks, for example, a long, stilted conversation between Marlowe and the Los Angeles District Attorney in which the facts of the case thus far are discussed), most argue that the delight of seeing Bogart's Marlowe and Bacall's Vivian Rutledge spar verbally, flirt, and fall in love more than makes up for it.

For an example of this view, see Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" essay on the film [1].

Critical reaction

Film critic Roger Ebert, who entered the film in his list of 100 Great Movies, praises the film's writing: Russ Meyer (left) and Roger Ebert, (1970) Roger Joseph Ebert (June 18, 1942 - ) is an Emmy Award-nominated American television personality, author, and film critic who began writing for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967. ...

"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."

Re-release

In the late 1990s, a prerelease print -- Hawks' original cut -- was discovered in the UCLA Film and Television Archives. Apparently, this version had been released to the military to play for troops stationed in the south Pacific. A consortium of benefactors led by Hugh Hefner raised the necessary funds to restore the print, and it was released to specialty houses for a short theatrical run, along with a documentary comparing the differences between it and the studio release version. A DVD containing both versions of the film was released in 2000, along with an edited down version of the comparison documentary. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Awards

• Library of Congress (1997) U.S. National Film Registry.

The National Film Registry is the registry of films selected by the United States National Film Preservation Board for preservation in the Library of Congress. ...

Quotes

• Carmen Sternwood: You're not very tall are you?
  Marlowe: Well, I, uh, I try to be.

• Vivian: So you do get up, I was beginning to think you worked in bed like Marcel Proust.
  Marlowe: Who's he?
  Vivian: You wouldn't know him, a French writer.
  Marlowe: Come into my boudoir.

• Vivian: You go too far, Marlowe.
  Marlowe: Those are harsh words to throw at a man, especially when he's walking out of your bedroom

• Vivian: You've forgotten one thing - me.
  Marlowe: What's wrong with you?
  Vivian: Nothing you can't fix.

• Marlowe: How did you happen to pick out this place?
  Vivian: Maybe I wanted to hold your hand.
  Marlowe: Oh, that can be arranged.

• Eddie Mars: You take a lot of risks.
  Marlow: Well, I get paid to.

• Vivian: Tell me: What do you usually do when you're not working?
  Marlowe: Oh, play the horses, fool around.
  Vivian: No women?
  Marlowe: I'm generally working on something most of the time.
  Vivian: Could that be stretched to include me?
  Marlowe: Well I like you. I've told you that before.
  Vivian: I like hearing you say it. But you didn't do much about it.
  Marlowe: Well, neither did you.
  Vivian: Well, 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, find out what their hole-card is. What makes them run.
  Marlowe: Find out mine?
  Vivian: I think so.

Trivia

• The author of the novel, Raymond Chandler, claimed that Martha Vickers gave an incredible performance as Carmen Sternwood. So much so that she completely overshadowed Lauren Bacall in her scenes. Unfortunately, this led the powers that be to edit the film in such a way that much of Vickers' performance ended up on the cutting room floor.^[2]
• The henchmen Sidney and Pete are named as a tribute to Bogie's frequent costars Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.^{[citation needed]}
• The film was made during the age of censorship, wherein certain points were expected to be able to be picked up by the adult audience but missed by children. The sort of books that Geiger rents quite profitably are mentioned in the book as pornography, which at the time was illegal and associated with organized crime. The photograph of Carmen wearing a "Chinese dress" and sitting in a "Chinese chair" is also supposed to allude to this.

Notes and references

1. ^ Hiney, T. and MacShane, F. "The Raymond Chandler Papers", Letter to Jamie Hamilton, 21 March 1949, page 105, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000
2. ^ Hiney, T. and MacShane, F. "The Raymond Chandler Papers", Letter to Jamie Hamilton, 30 May 1946, page 67, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

The Big Sleep (1946 film)

• 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