The Big Sleep (1946)

Film: The Big Sleep (1946)
Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone
Director: Howard Hawks
Oscar History: No nominations-film noir usually struggled in this department, but it seems weird that such a storied movie didn't land somewhere.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the Month of June, as a birthday present to myself, we'll be profiling 15 famous film noir movies I've never seen (my favorite film genre).  Look at the bottom of this review for some of the other movies we've profiled.

All of the films we're profiling for our Film Noir Series this month are classics, movies that I have desperately wanted to see that arguably I should have seen by this point but hadn't.  That being said, there is perhaps no movie we are going to chronicle this month that is more of a celebrated classic than The Big Sleep, and it's arguably the movie I'm most hanging-my-head-in-shame over having never seen prior to this project.  The second of four films that Bogie & Baby starred in together is frequently cited as their best (and weirdly the only one of the quartet that I hadn't seen already, as I'd even watched the strange Dark Passage), and serves as the catalyst of this series.  Hopefully you've seen it, because considering how convoluted the plot is, I'll need your help in the comments to sort it out.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie features Philip Marlowe (Bogart), a private detective hired by a wealthy, dying man who is trying to pay off the gambling debts of his youngest daughter Carmen (Vickers).  As he leaves, he is confronted by Carmen's older sister Vivian (Bacall), who is recently divorced and suspicious of the man her father has hired.  Marlowe begins investigating, assuming that he's less going to be going after the gambling debts and more investigating what happened to the dying man's protege Sean Regan, and soon finds himself covering up a murder, as a drugged Carmen is found at the home of a crooked used bookstore owner (stay with me now, it's going to get harder to follow in a second), and begins to investigate to try to figure out what really happened.  Carmen is clearly a suspect, as is Vivian, but it's a criminal ring that revolves around a man named Eddie Mars (Ridgely) that seems to be the proper culprit.  We see Marlowe go through seedier back alleys and deals (there's a running gag about him essentially collecting guns they're so often in his face), but eventually he outsmarts Mars, who while he may not have been the killer, at least of Regan (it's heavily implied that it's Carmen who is the killer, though never confirmed outright), he did certainly kill a man in cold blood, and deserved his bloody ending (by the laws of Hollywood).  The movie ends with Marlowe framing a dead Mars for the murders, with the assurance that Carmen will get help, and ends up in an embrace with Vivian, with whom he's fallen in love during the picture.

The Big Sleep is perhaps best known for its convoluted plot, and while I rarely have my cell phone out when I see a movie (it's a respect thing), this one I made sure to keep it buried as there are a lot of characters, and not every question gets answered.  Famously, director Howard Hawks had no idea based on the book what happened to the chauffeur, and so he telegrammed Raymond Chandler, the author of The Big Sleep...who also couldn't figure it out (real talk-I just saw the movie and I'm not entirely sure either).  The movie chops a lot of the more salacious aspects out of the novel, including a subplot involving the bookstore owner being both a pornography peddler and the gay lover of Vivian's ex-husband, neither of which would have worked in mid-1940's cinema.  To make matters more bizarre, there are essentially two different versions of this film, the one that was released in 1946 (nearly a year after production had completed) and one from 1945, which was eventually released in 1997 (with Hugh Hefner of all people leading the charge to make the original version of the film available to the public) and also is a common version of the picture that floats around in the ether.  The best way to tell the difference is the small but crucial role of Mona Mars is played by two different actresses: 1945 had Pat Clark and 1946 featured Peggy Knudsen (for the record, I saw the 1945 version, but for symmetry's sake we're going to say 1946 because that's when the film was originally released).

All of this is to say that The Big Sleep is a lot of work, and not always in a good way.  There's too much plot here, and while the twists are fun, they don't always make sense, and it's not a particularly good mystery that doesn't seem to tie together the loose ends (or leave enough clues for you to figure things out on your own).  The production of this movie is legendary, but the film it produced isn't as fun as some of the other movies with this iconic duo.  Bogart is marvelous as Philip Marlowe, though, and just based on his work here it's probably worth the "classic" label this movie achieved. He's wry, sexy, and plays this role with an assuredness that even one of cinema's most confident leading men rarely duplicated.  Bacall is gorgeous, but she's been better.  This was very early in her career, and she seemed to be getting her bearings still as an actress, more sliding on her natural charisma than talent.  The movie is basically stolen from her by the supporting women, all of whom are uniformly good.  Dorothy Malone plays a horny bookshop owner (for real...is this the prototype for the slutty librarian trope?), who seduces Bogart on a rainy day for some afternoon delight (it's staggering to me that this scene made it past the sensors...perhaps they were also mesmerized by Malone, who got her big break here and was headlining films within 2 years of its release).  Sonia Darrin (the only living cast member of the movie) wasn't credited for the film as the femme fatale Agnes thanks to a fight her agent had with Jack Warner, but she's supremely fun sparring with Bogart.  Best of all is Vickers, who steals every scene she's in as the drunk, oversexed Carmen.  Best known today as one of the many wives of Mickey Rooney, there's a raw, cutting edge to this performance that the rest of the film lacks and that feels a bit jarring even for 40's noir, and you kind of wish if they were going to make two versions of the film, one would have been entirely from her perspective.  This great acting makes up for a plot that stretches too thin for my tastes, and while I get the classic angle of the picture enough to warrant a "thumbs up," we'll get to better movies as this month progresses & we take a peak at more storied noir.

Previous Films in the Series: The Woman in the Window