The Big Sleep (1946)

It's probably too early in this essay for a cheap quip, but I'll do it anyway.  "The Big Sleep" was The Big Meh.  There was little exciting or challenging or even surprising in this picture.  Instead, this was a product of Hollywood's assembly line with star wattage and a standout director (Howard Hawks), but it never rises above what you'd expect from a Hollywood thriller.  Over the years it's been slapped with the noir label and regarded as a classic, but there's nothing subversive or outstanding about it to earn either distinction.  "The Big Sleep" plays it safe, and I don't care how charismatic the stars are.  A 70 year old film that played it safe in its own day is rather boring in this one.

It's a little puzzling to see how it got its classic status given its initial reception.  It was met with, basically, a lot of head scratching because if there's one thing The Big Sleep is known for, it is its indecipherable plot.  I still don't know exactly what all the different cons were about, and it's so confusing I find it hard to care.  A good whodunit makes you want to figure out a complicated plot.  This one doesn't, and apparently many critics of the day felt the same way.  That's not to say they hated it or it bombed.  They ate up the Bogie and Bacall angle, but that's one I'm not so enamored of.

Let's look at Bogart's and the writers' characterization of Phillip Marlowe.  The Marlowe we get here is nothing more than a facade of Bogart.  It's all surface characterization.  There's the familiar grey suit and hat, the Bogart voice, even the Bogart grimace.  However, on matters of substance, this character is a light breeze.  I've written before I thought Dick Powell's Marlowe from 1944's "Murder, My Sweet" was a little too light and breezy, but in his own way Bogart is similarly airy.  Bogart plays him as unflappable, which might be interesting if the writers gave him a backstory that shows how this came to be so.  Is he battle-hardened?  Too cynical to care?  We don't know.  He's the protagonist played by Humphrey Bogart, and that's about the extent of it.

And then there's Bacall.  Some actors' looks can cover up for a mediocre performance, but with Bacall it's her voice that covers it up.  Oh, when she got older she could turn in good performances, and her earlier work had a raw, feline sexuality, but here that feline rawness is missing.  Her character is oddly domestic, even though she's single, as she hovers over her reckless younger sister and tries to keep her very wealthy father's house in order.  About all Bacall brings to the table is her voice, and although it's a great one, it doesn't get to deliver any great lines like the "put your lips together and blow" one.

That signature moment from "To Have and Have Not" spoke to a great chemistry between Bogart and Bacall, but in "The Big Sleep" it takes a semi-vacation.  No great sparks fly in this film, only a mild flirtiness.  The one scene that's supposed to showcase their chemistry, the one where she calls the police and then he gets on the phone and there's this whole comic interlude, you know, that one, it's so forced and awkward I can't believe they left it in.  It wouldn't have been any more hamfisted if they put marquee text onscreen saying, "Look at us.  We have chemistry."  If you're looking for chemistry, the Bogart and Bacall relationship is the wrong one.  The duo in this film that had real chemistry was Bogart and Malone.  That's Dorothy Malone in her first big film playing the observent (and very pretty behind her glasses) bookseller across the street from the AJ Geiger Bookstore, the front for the central crime in the story.  That Malone kid really comes through here.  It's a shame we don't see more of her.

The other performances are workmanlike, except for Anne Vickers as Bacall's slutty younger siss.  If they hadn't cut the part down out of fears she was overshadowing Bacall, Vickers would have put an end to slut shaming permanently.  She's that good.  Okay, maybe that's hyperbole, but I'd still prefer to see a cut of this film with all her scenes restored.  It's also in Vickers character where the film gets a reputation for being daring and edgy.  She's not a good girl, and there's one scene where she's clearly stoned, though they leave the impression that she was drugged.  It's edgy if you look back at this era in a patronizing way, but it still falls comfortably within the Hays Code and more importantly doesn't really challenge the audience's preconceived notions going in.  It's judgmental comfort food.

In fact, if you think about it couldn't a film with huge stars as leads and a star director adapting a hit novel have come up with something more challenging?  If this was the best they could do to push the Code, well, that's weak tonic.

When you combine characterizations that are weak tea and a plot too complicated for its own good, you get a resolution that doesn't live up to the hype.  Because, with this mix, who cares?  Can anyone truly say they were moved or invested in any way toward these characters?  Is anyone truly on pins and needles waiting to see how Bogart gets out of a seemingly impossible jam?  I can't imagine it.  The appeal here is eye candy and nostalgia porn.  This is a "classic" that isn't all that good.  It's just entertaining enough not to bore viewers to tears and features two stars who are now icons, but they didn't become icons from this film.  It was their films before and after that did it.