"Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains!"

Raymond Chandler, a stylish writer who lived in the first half of twentieth-century America, wrote a number of crime stories and novels which set the tone for much of the whole field of crime and mystery stories of the second-half of that century, and which still influence such stories today. In 1939, Chandler published The Big Sleep, one of the most complicated mysteries of his whole body of work. Directed by Howard Hawks, it was released as a movie seven years later, in 1946. The film is lauded as a classic of the film noire genre, and some critics regard it as one of the 100 best movies of all time.

The story told within the film begins with private detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) going to the home of his new client, the wealthy General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), ostensibly to “correct” a few gambling debts incurred to a man named Geiger by Sternwood’s younger daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers). Sternwood’s older daughter Vivian (Lauren Bacall) believes that Sternwood is actually more interested in finding out what happened to his best friend who has gone missing, Sean Regan.

Marlowe discovers that Geiger has been murdered in his home. A mysterious man disappears from the scene, leaving Carmen, drugged, behind. Marlow discovers a camera at the crime scene with the film missing. A man named Joe Brody (Louis Jean Heydt) has the film and tries to blackmail Sternwood, claiming that Carmen was involved in Geiger's murder.

We learn that Owen Taylor, General Sternwood’s chauffeur, has killed Geiger. The blackmailer Brody knocked the chauffeur Taylor unconscious and took the film. Taylor, in the car, was killed when the car was driven off a pier. Then the story turns to the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Sean Regan.

Geiger had been living in a house owned by the smarmy Eddie Mars (Joe Ridgely), who also owns a gambling house where Sternwood’s older daughter Vivian often goes. While investigating Geiger’s murder, Philip Marlowe meets Mars and the two decide to collaborate to find out what has happened. But when Marlowe mentions the name Sean Regan, Mars clams up. Regan, it seems, has been romantically involved with Mars’ wife, and there is a suspicion that they have run off together. Vivian, mysteriously, wants Marlowe to finish the investigation of Geiger’s murder and leave the matter of Sean Regan alone. Marlowe finds all of this very curious.

Then we find, ambiguously, that Mars has persuaded Vivian that he can prove that Carmen murdered Regan, and has been pressuring her to cooperate in a cover-up. We learn that Mars’ wife is not with Regan at all, but she was only trying to make it look like she did. Mars had it all planned this way so that he would not be a murder suspect. Marlowe then convinces Vivian to turn against Mars and help him instead. Marlowe then realizes that Carmen did not kill Geiger, but she did indeed kill Sean Regan because she was jealous of his affair with Mars’ wife. At the Geiger house, Marlowe arranges for Mars to be shot by his own gunmen. Marlowe then tells Vivian she has a choice, she can have Carmen committed, or else he will turn her in to the police.

I must confess that, at face value, the plot seems pretty bizarre, especially to audiences removed by more than 50 years from the release of the film. Yet three things make The Big Sleep interesting.

First of all, there is the style of the film. The Big Sleep was a classic mystery of the Warner Brothers studio of that time. Convoluted, complex, and improbable, it had the somewhat archetypal detective Phillip Marlowe entering a matrix of femme fatales, dead ends, wisecracks, hard-nosed action, gunplay, and violence. Thus the film moves along through garish flashes of action and changing light, and we are never quite sure who is who, except for Marlowe himself, and we are somewhat in the dark about him, as well. The story comes across like a fist in your face but we cannot quite see our opponent, the reason, or what the outcome will be.

That has much to do with the second element of the film’s import: the plot watershed beneath the seen plot. In many ways, that which we see on the screen, plot-wise, is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Below the surface, hinted at, there is a world of intrigue, which may- or may not- involve many things which the motion picture codes of that time would not allow to be shown on screen. There are references to the use of illegal drugs. There are inferences as to Carmen as a nymphomaniac. A pornography racket may be in the background. And, along with various heterosexual liaisons, homosexuality as well. But at the time the movie was released, these “causes” beneath the surface of the plot were not shown in any revelatory detail; only the “effects”, thus there is an insider/outsider effect, and the loose ends stitched together left the surface plot as a series of mysteries within the (obvious) mystery.

With lesser actors, such a story might have been a forgettable mess, but we remember the film because of the force of the interplay of some very fine screen talent under the hand of a highly skilled director, in Howard Hawks. It is the acting/direction factor which is the third element that puts life into an otherwise too-nebulous story. It is then that the negative of this plot becomes a positive, because if the actors can make us believe in the story, then the story becomes somehow credible. And it incurs another benefit as well, in that fact that it is left to our imaginations to fill in the gaps in this dark and violent plot full of questions unanswered.

Rising above all the other actors, who in point of fact do very credible jobs, are the two actors whose personal off-screen Hollywood mythology injected tons of interest in the film then and now: Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Not only did they capitalize on their film personas and the chemistry of their off-screen relationship, but they had some lines of dialogue that fit them to a tee. For example:

Vivian (taunting): So you're a private detective. I didn't know they existed, except in books. Or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors. My, you're a mess, aren't you?
Marlowe: I'm not very tall either. Next time, I'll come on stilts, wear a white tie and carry a tennis racket.
Vivian: I doubt if even that would help. Now this business of Dad's. You think you can handle it for him?
Marlowe: It shouldn't be too tough.
Vivian: Really? I would have thought a case like that took a little effort.
Marlowe: Not too much.
Vivian: What will your first step be?
Marlowe: The usual one.
Vivian: I didn't know there was a usual one.
Marlowe: (with a lisp) Oh sure there is. It comes complete with diagrams on page forty-seven of 'How to Be a Detective in Ten Easy Lessons' correspondence school textbook. And, uh, your father offered me a drink.
Vivian: You must have read another one on how to be a comedian.

As you watch the film and you listen to those lines of dialogue, watch the eyes of the two actors. There you will see two people not just performing for the camera/audience, but two people who know and enjoy each other, and who are having a one of the times of their lives together. They were in their heyday. They know it and we know it, and it only adds strength to the film, as it added another milestone to their mythology.

Bogart, as Marlowe, is, of course, the crux on which the film ultimately and apparently rests. We know Bogart so well because he is who we are at times- tired, pessimistic, and yet hoping to have that inner sense of honor, and we can relate. But beyond the camera was Howard Hawks, and it is his keen sense of timing and direction that made Bogart so real in the movie. And that made the film itself work. So if there is credit to be given for that richness of the film, it must be equally divided between the key actor and the director.

If you are in the mood for something very different, and if that something is an old noire-ish crime-mystery movie, and if you love Bogart and Bacall, give the original 1946 The Big Sleep a look. It was movies like this, made from books like Chandler’s, that started a trend.

Five Stars/*****


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older