- Is Philip Marlowe a detective? I've read all of the Raymond Chandler novels and seen most of the movie adaptations, and I'm honestly still not sure. The issue at hand is that he never seems to get around to doing any real sleuthing. In Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep, Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) spends his time smoking, drinking, picking up women, sleeping until mid-afternoon, collecting handguns, and accepting checks for his efforts. At one point the film, we see that he does indeed have an office, but is that really enough to count?
- The plot is less a story than it is a cast of characters. First and foremost are the Sternwoods, headed up by the aging patrician General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), who first hires Marlowe to look into a blackmail case. The blackmail involves Sternwood's daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers), who seems desperate to prove that thumb-sucking isn't just for infants. Sternwood's other daughter, Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall), won't stop hounding Marlowe about his investigation, which only makes him more interested in her affairs. There are an assortment of other players, good (Regis Toomey, Elisha Cook, Jr., Dorothy Malone, Charles D. Brown) and bad (John Ridgely, Bob Steele, Louis Jean Heydt) alike, and I'd be hard-pressed to tell you how they all fit together. In potboilers like this, that's practically the point.
- Unlike many films noir, The Big Sleep stands out primarily for the high quality of its cast and writing rather than its direction or cinematography, neither of which is particularly striking. What is memorable is the constant stream of playful repartee between Marlowe, who communicates primarily in wisecracks, and Vivian, who is more than Marlowe's match in the wits department. Lesser actors would have delivered the same great lines, but only Bogart and Bacall could make every conversation seem iconic. As for the writing, Chandler's source material was adapted by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman, surely one of the most talented trio of writers ever to collaborate on a film. The result is a classic that paved the way for future collaborations between its two leads, both onscreen and off, and that cemented Bogart's reputation for playing detectives who talk more than they detect.
