"One
day Bogie came on the set and said to Howard (the director), 'Who pushed Taylor
off the pier?' Everything stopped," Bacall writes in her autobiography
about the shooting of one of film noir's most convoluted plots,
The Big Sleep
.
The
director, screenwriters and even the novel's author were all unable come up
with an answer to that particular whodunnit, but that hasn't stopped
generations of movie-goers from falling in love with the film and little wonder
why. Recreating the chemistry that was palpable in To Have and Have Not
, married couple, Bogie and
Bacall again take center stage in The Big Sleep.And sparks do fly, just as hot
and heavy as in other films between the two. Bogart, known for taking his
personal style to an art form, definitely has more than a match in Becall,
whose dry reserve and sultry stare could make men start breathing heavy.As the
two stars trade witty dialogue back and forth, the film also exhibits the
subtle, but effective film techniques that noir is known for, such as high key
lighting and use of shadow. And, as Roger Egbert notes, "...The writers
(William Faulkner, Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett) wrote one of the most
quotable of screenplays: It's unusual to find yourself laughing in a movie not
because something is funny but because it's so wickedly clever."
Interestingly,
this film, starring one of Hollywood's biggest money-makers and a star on the
rise, did not see the screen for almost a year and half after filming was
complete. As the war was drawing to an end, MGM decided that a detective story
had more lasting power than war-themed movies; once the war was finished many
movies might seem dated. So war movies saw the screen first! Thank goodness for
us that this movie sat in the vaults for a year. During the elapsed time,
Becall's reviews in a movie flop, The Confidential Solider
, forced movie execs to take a
second look at the noir film which in turn resulted in several retakes. The end
result is a less linear, but more intriguing plot with the strong performances
we can see today!
When
Phillip Marlowe takes a job concerning an aging General and his two wild
daughters, little is as it seems. Is is just a blackmail case, or something
more? And what of the man that the general so carefully did not hire him to
find? When the bodies start piling up, it seems there are some secrets people
are willing to pay for any way they can. Based on the mystery novel of the same
name, The Big Sleep takes you into the process of how a private dick solves his
case.
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