PREFACE: All right, this one was originally written as an essay for a film class, explaining the relevance and importance of a film on the AFI's top 100 - as such, it's much more formal a review than I'd ever write normally, and perhaps unindictative of my writing style, and terribly fact-heavy, and quotes from other reviewers, a practice which I routinely try to avoid but was a requirement for this particular paper... but it is an on-point indication of my feelings toward "The Big Sleep," one of my favorite film noirs. Hope you enjoy, or at least find my amateurish attempts at film scholar-ism a whimisical way to pass the time.
I’ve seen many films and summaries of films that have, at one point, utilized the phrase “the plot thickens” to denote a surprise, revelation, or twist in the narrative. I’ve always thought it was a ridiculous phrase. And then I saw “The Big Sleep,” and the idea of plot-thickening, all of a sudden, made complete sense—its plot is one of the most intricate, labyrinthine puzzles I’ve ever had to decipher, and with every new kink in the storyline, the plot truly thickens, growing fatter and fatter with each one. By the film’s climax, “The Big Sleep” is practically pregnant with twists, double-crossings, and characters. It’s like the most complicated of knots—it’s not impossible to untangle, but it’s so delicately close that you should handle it with care.
Which “film noir” actually came first is a subject of considerable debate. Literally “black film,” the phrase was coined by French critics who noticed that American film mysteries, especially those filmed during and after World War II, were employing similar film techniques—dark lighting, odd camera angles, subversive crime-related plots. Essentially, film noirs are the intersection of gloomy European (primarily German) expressionism (especially Fritz Lang’s haunting “M”) and American crime dramas (“The Public Enemy,” “Scarface”). John Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon,” released in 1941, is considered by many to be the first film noir, and it likely is. If “The Maltese Falcon” is not the first film that could be considered a film noir, it was certainly the first film noir to hit Hollywood. (Dirks)
Certainly, “The Maltese Falcon” set the stage for one of the most celebrated and twisted examples of film noir ever to come out of Hollywood, Howard Hawks’s “The Big Sleep”. Surfacing in 1946, “The Big Sleep” covered a lot of the same ground as “The Maltese Falcon”—both starred Humphrey Bogart as a hard-boiled private detective, both were based on books by prominent mystery writers (Dashiell Hammett for “Falcon,” Raymond Chandler for “Sleep”), and both had similarly complicated plots, delighting in introducing new twists to the audience. In fact, it could be argued that Bogart’s Sam Spade of “Falcon” and Philip Marlowe of “Sleep” weren’t too far removed from each other—or, for that matter, both that far removed from Bogart himself.
But “The Big Sleep” was a different kind of film noir. In the crucial film noir role of femme fatale, 22-year-old Lauren Bacall was cast opposite Bogart. After displaying considerable chemistry in 1944's “To Have and Have Not,” Bacall’s on-screen debut, director Hawks was convinced that Bacall was the woman for the role. Combined with celebrated novelist William Faulkner’s screenplay, the two again displayed sizzling chemistry, indulging in some of the most risque dialogue allowed of the time. As per usual for film noir, the double entendres and sexual connotations of certain phrases were not made explicit—rather, Bogie and Bacall’s snappy, sassy verbiage lent just the right amount of push to the written words. It is undeniably better this way—while Bogart’s tough performance and Chandler’s sordid, tangled plot certainly contributed to what made “The Big Sleep” so memorable, I personally was most enthralled by the dialogue. As a writer, this is the kind of dialogue that you pray your muse will bless you with. (Unfortunately, mine seems to have been out to lunch in that department.) However, it’s not just the scripted lines that give the dialogue in “The Big Sleep” that extra push. It’s Bogie and Bacall’s delivery—their undeniable on-screen rapport lends itself to some impressive verbal sparring, and the film slings classic one-liners from all directions as a result. As a result of that, the primary parties responsible for “The Big Sleep” have made arguably one of the most quoted films of all time. (“I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. I don’t like them myself. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings.”) The screenplay of “The Big Sleep” is also notable for introducing aspects that were considered decidedly sleazy given the time period: besides the occasional piece of lust-driven dialogue (including a conversation about horse-racing that takes the form of one long double entendre), risque themes are abundant. One of the principal characters is basically a pornographer, a smut peddler; a plot point, meanwhile, revolves around some, well, compromising pictures taken of a wealthy heiress. Since we’re in an age of film where anything goes, this is all barely PG-rated stuff these days—but considering the time period and the attitudes of audiences, “The Big Sleep” was, in its day, quite the risque picture.
Much has been made of the plot of “The Big Sleep.” It’s true, much of it is impenetrable without innumerable hours’ worth of post-film rumination and analyzation. Because of the alarming rate that new twists are introduced into the story, accurately following it becomes all but impossible. When I saw “The Big Sleep,” I tried to keep up with every murder and double-cross in my head, but all I came up with was Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick, and then I realized that I had truly botched the viewing experience. Watching it a second time, it became clear to me that I did not—you can view “The Big Sleep” as a literary experience or a cinematic experience. To approach it from the literary standpoint is to concern yourself with every plot point, every character, every twist, and to try to make it all fit together in your head. To approach it from the cinematic standpoint is to put all rational thought on standby and just enjoy the movie, because it’s still an enormously entertaining film despite all the problems you might have following the narrative—watch Bogie play tough-guy and deliver smarmy one-liners (at one point he deadpans to a gunman “seems there’s so many guns around town lately but so few brains”), listen to Faulkner and Chandler’s whip-smart dialogue, immerse yourself in the film’s gloomy, dark atmosphere.
“Film noir films ... show the dark and inhuman side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love, and they emphasize the brutal, unhealthy, seamy, shadowy, dark and sadistic sides of the human experience.” This quote from Tim Dirks’ The Greatest Films website encapsulates what film noirs are and what they, as a general group of films, exemplify. I don’t think that the increased prolificness of film noir post-World War II was exactly a coincidence—this is when the film noir as a subgenre really came into prominence, most likely because feelings of disillusionment and despair associated with wartime translated into the work of artists, artists who felt that films no longer had to be happy-go-lucky, but could be seedy and could depict the other side of life, the side of life that we safely stay away from by staying on this side of the screen.
Roger Ebert describes “Big Sleep” director Howard Hawks as “one of the great American directors of pure movies,” and it’s an assessment that’s hard to argue with. Hawks was one of the pioneers of film as pure escapist entertainment. He dabbled in virtually every major genre of film, from early crime dramas (“Scarface,” “The Criminal Code”) to action (“Red River,” “Air Force”) to some of the most legendary screwball comedies of all time (“Bringing Up Baby,” “His Girl Friday”). His credentials suited him to almost any project. One thing that was amazing about Howard Hawks as a director was his ability to adapt to any style of film that he was helming at the time. Though he worked in every genre imaginable, he never brought to his films an inappropriate mood out-of-synch with the content. Howard Hawks always seemed like, as a director, he always had a good feel for the material, and “The Big Sleep” is no exception. Hawks creates impeccable film noir atmosphere here, a dark, overcast, rain-slicked mood piece that really transports the viewer into the story. Not once did I find that anything in the film struck me as resoundingly contrived or wrong; in fact, I was thoroughly impressed with the versatility of a director that could evoke the frenetic comic atmosphere of something like “Bringing Up Baby,” and still effectively manage the gloomy mood of this film.
“The Maltese Falcon” may have been the first film noir, but I think “The Big Sleep” was the moment where film noir came into its own and realized its potential as a genre. Roger Ebert says it’s “one of the great film noirs, a black-and-white symphony that exactly reproduces Chandler’s ability, on the page, to find a tone of voice that keeps its distance, yet is wry and humorous and cares.” He’s perfectly on-point in his assessment: almost 60 years later, every film noir since has been more or less an attempt to emulate “The Big Sleep,” and yet it not only remains as fresh and relevant and entertaining as it was in '46, but it’s never been equaled. Despite what is suggested via its title, “The Big Sleep” is a thoroughly interesting, engaging, and entertaining benchmark in film noir.
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