For the longest time, I have been saying 1946’s The Big Sleep is my favorite noir. It looks amazing, the characters are fascinating. Just look at this cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone, Elisha Cook, Jr. The dialogue is full of lines that are so clever that nobody on Earth would have ever casually said one of them off the top of their head. The photography, though almost exclusively on sets and the studio lot, is a course on how to shoot noir.
The problem is I saw it one time too many. The plot is notoriously, legendarily labyrinthine, but I was so stunned by the performances and dialogue before that I never really focused on the mechanics of the plot. Since I can probably repeat long passages of the script verbatim, I found myself more focused on the intertwining mysteries than ever before. They do not stand up to scrutiny.
That isn’t to say I understand all the interconnected people and events, far from it. But closer inspection reveals the events that happen during the runtime, and others which we are aware of but do not see, largely seem to be tangential to the overall plot.
For that matter, what exactly is the plot? Bogie is hired by the patriarch of the Sternwood estate to investigate yet another blackmail attempt, though this one was through Sean Reagan, somebody in his employ whom he regarded as the son he never had.
Instead, the man has two daughters who are trouble: “I suppose they have all the usual vices including they invented for themselves.” One is Bacall, whose chief vice seems to be gambling. Younger sister Vickers, on the other hand, is a nymphomaniac who is into drugs. The blackmail appears to concern pornographic photos of here.
Oh, there’s also John Ridgely’s gangster, whose wife might have run away with Reagan. And there’s another underworld figure played by Theodore von Eltz who has a business which supposedly sells rare books, but which is just a front for illegal activities of the type I still have yet to discern. Oh, and Elisha Cook, Jr., appears out of nowhere as a chump who is sweet on the cruel woman who works in that fake bookshop, only to be poisoned by a thug.
The plot is so complex that a famous anecdote from the shoot has Bogey asking director Howard Hawks who killed the Sternwood chauffeur. The question bounced around until it got back to Raymond Chandler, the author of the original novel. Supposedly, Chandler yelled, “Who cares?” and hung up. I have the nagging suspicion there are other, lesser plot elements which are unresolved. It is hard to tell when where are at least two fairly significant characters we never see. Then there’s Etlz, who is barely in the runtime, yet a great deal of the movie is centered around his character.
But all this isn’t to say the movie isn’t still amazing, because it is. There is so much to enjoy here that it would be great even if there was even less resolved.
I mentioned the dialogue, and that is where the picture especially shines. Let’s start with the first scene, where the elderly General Sternwood (Charles Waldron) insists Bogie have some whiskey: “I like to see people drink […] Nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy.” A good example of Bogie’s personality is when Ridgely confronts him in the house Eltz has been renting from him. Ridgely: “Your story didn’t sound quite right.” Bogie: “That’s too bad. You got a better one?”
Many of the best lines concern Vickers, a clearly unhinged, yet still smoldering, presence which nearly burns through the screen. You can imagine what leads Bogie to say this of her: “She tried to sit on my lap when I was standing up.” There’s also this advice he delivers to the butler: “You ought to wean her. She’s old enough.” I’m just impressed Bogie is immune to her oversexed advances. Vickers, playfully: “You’re not very tall, are you?” Bogie: “Well, I try to be.”
Other women also seem to throw themselves at him throughout the runtime, and I am definitely not jealous these various pinup stereotypes have designs on him. Heck, cab driver Joy Barlow makes a pass at him after only knowing him for the duration of that one fare.
One of the most famous moments in the picture is when Malone steals the show as the owner of a real bookstore across the street from Eltz’s fake establishment. This area of L.A. must be the bookstore district. She’s intrigued by Bogie, as well as the intrigue occurring nearby, so she closes up shop and Bogie stays there for a while. When Bogie turns around, she has taken off her glasses. They spend the afternoon doing…something. When he leaves, he says, “So long, pal”, which may be one of the coldest dismissals I have seen in the history of cinema.
I noticed I didn’t have any quotes from Bacall in this and I’m comfortable with that. Honestly, her lines don’t read as all that clever on the page, but the way she delivers them is stunning. She has one of the most distinctive voices ever recorded and she could read the dictionary and make it beguiling.
My mental image of The Big Sleep is a montage of moments like that, and it turns out that watching it after the awe has worn off some reveals it isn’t much more than a variety of elements floating together loosely in some semblance of a plot. That isn’t even a criticism, it’s just how it is. I watch this, and doubtlessly will again, to see Bogie’s habit of tugging on his right earlobe when he’s thinking. Or to hear dialogue such as that he spits out when he is frustrated by the proliferation of firearms: “Everybody seems to think a gat in the hand means the world by the tail” and “Somebody’s always giving me guns”. I’ll leave you with this exchange between Vickers and Bogie: “Is he as cute as you?” “Nobody is.” For better or worse, is there any other noir as cute as The Big Sleep? Nothing is.
Dir: Howard Hawks
Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall,