The Big Sleep poster & wallpaper

Bob Steele, Charles D. Brown, Charles Waldron

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made screen history together more than once, but they were never more popular than in this 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel, directed by Howard Hawks (T...( read more  read more... )o Have and Have Not). Bogart plays private eye Philip Marlowe, who is hired by a wealthy socialite (Bacall) to look into troubles stirred up by her wild, young sister (Martha Vickers). Legendarily complicated (so much so that even Chandler had trouble following the plot), the film is nonetheless hugely entertaining and atmospheric, an electrifying plunge into the exotica of detective fiction. William Faulkner wrote the screenplay. --Tom Keogh

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25,983 ratings

Unrated, 230 min.

Directed by: Howard Hawks

Release Date: August 31, 1946

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DVD Release Date: February 15, 2000

Stats: 1,399 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (1,399)

  • garyX
    May 21, 2009
    garyX
    Private eye Philip Marlowe is hired to investigate the blackmail of a young heiress but when the corpses start to pile up, he realises that the case has more than meets the eye. I love Film Noir, and Bogart for me is the best of its leading men. Bogart and Bacall have one of the ...( read more)greatest screen partnerships and Chandler was one of the best exponents of the art of the detective story. The plot has more twists and turns than a sidewinder that's swallowed a corkscrew, it involves a femme fatale who could melt a polar ice cap and dialogue that's more hard boiled than beelzebub's breakfast egg. It just doesn't get any better than this. The greatest Noir ever made.
  • pier007
    February 28, 2009
    pier007
    Once again, at the orders of the great Howard Hawks, Bogie and Bacall throw off sparks whenever they share a scene in this brilliant adaptation of Raymond Chandler's classic novel.
    A complex plot, very hard to unravel, even for the shrewd Philip Marlowe, who seems to find corpses...( read more) anywhere he looks.
    The story grabs you and never decays, contrary, it grows in tension with each minute, and almost every attitude seen by the players, and line of dialogue spoken has incommensurable vigor.
  • rubystevens
    December 25, 2008
    rubystevens
    i never knew there were two versions of this film. apparently it was shelved for a couple years as the studio had a backlog of war films to get out. the film was then recut with added scenes to amp up the bogie-bacall relationship, creating a possibly better film that never qui...( read more)te makes sense but it doesn't seem to matter. grade A noir with a script by william faulkner
  • sanjurosamurai
    November 9, 2008
    sanjurosamurai
    another of the many astounding films featuring humphrey bogart. hawks directing job was great as he handled the difficult and involved script as well as anyone could have. the story was great, reminding me a lot of the maltese falcon but maybe even slightly better. i was intri...( read more)gued the whole way through, and this is one of those rare films that leaves you completely satisfied without a criticism. amazing movie.
  • FangsFirst
    October 9, 2008
    FangsFirst
    While The Maltese Falcon and his turn as Sam Spade may be Bogart's more famous private detective film and role, The Big Sleep is a close runner up, thanks, in no small part I'm sure, to the presence of his mistress/wife (she played both roles--in reality--during the...( read more) extended filming), Lauren Bacall. I was tempted to comment on comparison between probably the two biggest names in mystery fiction at the time, at least in retrospect, but I find my points less salient through research. I felt the name of Raymond Chandler (who penned the novel behind this film) had more meat to it than Dashiell Hammett (who penned Maltese), but I find neither has an overbearingly larger or more famous set of works--both pretty equally adapted into a handful of big-name, still-remembered pictures with only two or three novels, and the rest adapted into b-roll pictures and less well-known ones. Certainly, I cannot judge either strictly as a writer, being as I've read neither of them--but I've always had the impression that Hammett was the plotter and Chandler was the wordsmith, tangled forever in dense and awkward-but-perfect metaphors. Plus, I always liked Philip Marlowe as a name better than the Stan Lee-esque alliterative Sam Spade.*

    Philip Marlowe (Bogart, naturally) is hired by General Sternwood (Charles Waldron) to stop the source of demand for repayment of gambling debts from his daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers). Marlowe suggests Sternwood simply pay the man, Arthur Gwynne Geiger, but a history of blackmail by one Joe Brody leaves Sternwood firm in hiring Marlowe to investigate the matter. Breezing past the overly friendly Carmen and the defiant pride of her sister Vivian (Bacall), Marlowe trails the source of the demands into a rather complex series of events built around multiple murders--including Geiger himself. He stumbles onto the toes of Joe Brody, as well as casino operator Eddie Mars (John Ridgely), and into plots that include backstabbing, affairs, old enemies, unsolved murders and theft.

    This film was released twice, first to GIs and then later to the general public--that first release had Bogie and Bacall in an affair, until their marriage in 1945, after the film was first released. After urgings and a waiting period that pushed war films out while they were still relevant, The Big Sleep had new scenes filmed and edited in, now with a husband and wife instead of two illicit lovers. These scenes tried to push in the chemistry the two had in their first film together, where they met, 1944's To Have and Have Not--also a novel adaptation by director Howard Hawks. By most accounts (including my own) this chemistry survives and indeed thrives. I literally missed the infamous horse-racing dialogue the first time around (as in, did not even hear it, not did not notice the subtext, which would be difficult), but it's pretty upfront and bracing in its veiled explicitness. Bacall once again manifests her powerful character, determined to defy Bogart, who similarly tries to keep her at arm's length, the two inevitably giving in to their mutual desires. Bogart himself adds an interesting and delightful note in a hasty impersonation of a bookstore patron in his investigations, the flip of a brim and use of glasses, as well as a voice pushed up a few notches in pitch, makes for a believable turn to snow an employee at the bookstore Geiger fronts himself with. Bogart gets us to believe simultaneously that this is a character in Marlowe's repertoire and enough of a character that Agnes (Sonia Darrin) does not instantly recognize him later. This is a pretty powerful move and is similar to the impressive turn by Christopher Reeve turning himself onscreen from Clark Kent to Superman--not through special effects but through body language. That link to "real" character between their imagined normal personality and false, disguise personality is terribly impressive and not something to sneeze at.

    Behind Bogart, as is usually the case with his best films, is an excellent and witty screenplay, adapted from Chandler's novel by Leigh Brackett (beginning her relationship with Hawks that would see a trio of very similar but very good westerns appear starring John Wayne--Rio Bravo, Rio Lobo and El Dorado, as well as non-western with Wayne Hatari! and a return to chandler's work with Robert Altman's modernized 1973 The Long Goodbye), William Faulkner (again, yes, that Faulkner) and Jules Furthman (bridge between the two, having worked with Faulkner and Hawks on To Have and Have Not, later working with Hawks and Brackett on Rio Bravo). The screenplay and Hawks' steady, careful hand as director make for an instantly absorbing experience, one I was delighted to see and bears that full, ripe fruit of the so-called "Golden Age of Cinema" that makes for such a pleasant experience. Watching gangsters in movies like this with a mental eye toward the different approach taken now shows why both that decreased distance between the real and the unreal makes the unreal stick out more in modern film, and why the technical obsession to please the irritating nitpickers and goof-callers has led to a more sterile action experience. Hawks and contemporaries built action scenes with staging, pacing, editing and characters, rather than elaborate choreography and excessive CGI. If one knows much about actual shooting or action, certainly these scenes end up looking awfully fictional, but it's not as if the obsession with accuracy that followed them has changed that completely.

    Much like, to pick a very dissimilar comparative subject, The Philadelphia Story, I instantly loved this film. It keeps up a snappy pace and never falters, plays things straight but leaves a few threads unwound (a criticism in some circles, but usually measured as meaningless next to the Bogie/Bacall magic), and manages performances that use skill, authenticity and personality to overcome any concerns about believability and render them the work of nothing but contrarians.

    *Yes, I am fully aware that "The Man" did this far, far after Hammett.
  • alexroy69
    October 29, 2009
    alexroy69
    "The Big Sleep" est co-écrit par William Faulkner. Alors en partant, ça a un poids considérable. Il faut croire qu'il savait y faire puisque le scénario, bien que complexe et foisonnant de personnages, est admirablement bien ficelé. Les dialogues sont du niveau des meilleurs film...( read more)s de Bogart, dont la chimie avec Lauren Bacall est d'une authenticité presque attendrissante.

    Un film noir qui se trouve dans le top 250 IMDB, c'est toujours une curiosité. "The Big Sleep" est un classique de la trempe de "Double Indemnity", un de ces films que sa réputation précède au point d'être dangereuse. Heureusement, il passe le test avec tous les honneurs, et quiconque s'intéresse de près ou de loin au film noir, à Humphrey Bogart ou au cinéma en général doit absolument l'ajouter à sa liste.
  • cherrishy
    October 21, 2009
    cherrishy
    A classic of the noir genre. Even if the plot is really too complicated to understand at first time, Bacall & Bogart chemistry makes it adorable.
    Screenplay is witty and argue, something that is almost gone nowadays.
  • Arianeta
    October 21, 2009
    Arianeta
    The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. It stars Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the female lead. The Big Sleep is a prime example of the film noir genre...( read more). William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman co-wrote the screenplay.
  • crazydannielle16
    October 13, 2009
    crazydannielle16
    What I can't understand is why Humphrey witnessed three murders and never went to the police about it. Also, at the end, he didn't go to the police because he was "in love" with a girl he JUST MET!!! It makes no sense. There was good acting but it was too all over the place for m...( read more)e and there were too many names and I couldn't get them all straight and it was confusing.
  • ryanstiner
    October 12, 2009
    ryanstiner
    This is Bogart at his finest. Although The Big Sleep suffers from significant edits when compared to the outstanding novel by Raymond Chandler, it remains as a classic example of the Film Noir genre. The banter between Bogart and Bacall is unparalleled. Rent it today... and then ...( read more)read the book!

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  • alesaenz1
    June 8, 2008
    alesaenz1
    If you are a fan of detective, you have to watch this movie! It's the ultimate detective story! A mystery so complex that even the novelist that written the story wasn't able to know who the killer was! :)
    All the women are gorgeous, in that way that only the good old black & white movies can portraited them. And every girl wants something with the detective! What more do you want? I watched both versions of the movie, and I still prefer the final one.
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The Big Sleep Trivia

  • Vivian: So you do get up, I was beginning to think you worked in bed like Marcel Proust. Marlowe: Who's he? Vivian: You wouldn't know him, a French writer. Marlowe: Come into my boudoir what movie??  Answer »
  • Which Bogey classic is this? Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a rich family. Before the complex case is over, he's seen murder, blackmail, and what might be love.   Answer »
  • Who played gumshoe Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep (1946)?  Answer »
  • Which major American writer did script work on "The Big Sleep," an adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel?  Answer »
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