The Big Sleep (1946)

Directed by Howard Hawks.
Starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

In a Nutshell: A PI is hired to untangle a family’s underworld involvements.

Sometimes all a film needs is charisma to overcome its own limitations. Howard Hawks’ adaptation of the hardboiled Raymond Chandler novel succeeds this, with no small thanks to the studio. The executives behind The Big Sleep recognized its overly convoluted plot as too disposable for audiences. Re-shoots and re-edits changed the film’s rhythm from a morose noir into a coy love story amidst a tumultuous underworld. Even with the outsider influence, the current incarnation of The Big Sleep remains definitively Hawks-ian; relaxed and cynical, but hardly morose.

Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) is sent to clear the names of an infirm general’s daughters (Lauren Bacall and Martha Vickers) centered on a family employee’s disappearance. Though Marlowe becomes quickly steeped into a web of hoods, gamblers, pornographers and other riff-raff. Bogart was the first to play Marlowe, honing the weary romanticism that has lived in film PI’s for decades. The plot throws out tight bits of suspense, with Bogie retaining his collected wits. It is as “cool” as movie “cool” gets. Bacall, Bogart’s love on and off set, matches the whip-smart repartee with the aplomb of a seasoned pro. With the murders and motivations fading from moviegoer memory, it is their crackling, cutthroat courtship that has burnished their reputation as one of cinema’s most iconic couples.

If The Big Sleep could keep one distinction, it demonstrates exactly how to bottle star power. It rolls along good-naturedly through sin and vice without acting wary of its own shadow. This effortless “cool” can be distilled to the inward manner Bogart sizes up an adversary or deflects a sexpot’s advances. Hawks and a trio of screenwriters punch up the noir gloom with droll self-amusement, nimbly avoiding histrionics. Without a proper structure, it could be argued that The Big Sleep coasts on its surface strengths, but that’s just it. It is not the plot that leaves us spinning, but great dialogue, great acting, great scenes. As free floating as cinematic jazz, albeit with some outside improvisations.