The Big Sleep

The plot of Howard Hawks’ adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep is famously inscrutable — to many, even impenetrable — but that hasn’t kept it from securing its prominent place in the film noir canon. A key element of the film’s enduring appeal, of course, is Humphrey Bogart’s iconic portrayal of Chandler’s private eye — not the first screen interpretation of Philip Marlowe but the most indelible — and his pairing with Lauren Bacall (their second after 1944’s To Have and Have Not). Story-wise, Marlowe is summoned to the mansion of General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), who ostensibly needs help investigating gambling debts but whose two daughters, the kittenish Carmen (Martha Vickers) and the divorced Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall), steer the investigation in lots of deadly directions. Set in and around Los Angeles, and despite a couple of dark alley scenes, The Big Sleep doesn’t feel like an urban noir given its many two-shots in domestic interiors (greenhouses, bookstores, cabins) and action sequences in misty suburban exteriors at night. A master study in writing around the Production Code, the film uses glances, body language, and a flood of double entendres to infuse an extraordinary degree of sexuality for the period.