The Big Sleep

Don't worry about figuring out the plot of this one; everybody has his own version, and it doesn't really matter. Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall embellish the incomprehensible Raymond Chandler book with their own brand of loving, fighting, killing, and grunting, and that should be enough for anyone. William Faulkner is responsible for the scenario.

In the days right after the war when Faulkner was in Hollywood, Bogart was still more or less in the bloom of youth. So it seems quite plausible that from the first scene of the movie to the last he should be sharing his bottle with a series of caressable, long-haired chicks in evening dresses. Next to this sort of activity, Bogy's greatest talent is to be worked over by thugs--a common hazard for private eyes. He has many opportunities to display it.

Miss Bacall is her best sulky self as the daughter of the old general, all mixed up with bad people. She slinks the shady line between a good girl and a bad with customary felinity, and no one else could ever give as much to the lines, "It depends on who's in the saddle." Other nice ones are, "I liked that...I' like more...that was even better," and Bogart growling elsewhere, "He'd knock your teeth in and then kick you in the stomach for mumbling.

The dialogue, in fact, seems to be one of the strong points of the film. But when you think about it afterwards, you realize there wasn't much to the words after all: it was all Bogy and Baby. The remaining characters, who wander in and out gratuitously getting shot, poisoned and otherwise mistreated, all do a good job, too, mere foils though they are.

It takes something special to kid the book, the script, and the other characters and make the audience love it. Bogart and Bacall have that something. In The Big Sleep they are at their corny, classic best.