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| Title: THE BIG SLEEP Year: 1946 Rating: ***1/2 |
One of the most important agendas director Howard Hawks had for Humphrey Bogart in THE BIG SLEEP — following his breakthrough in HIGH SIERRA followed by THE MALTESE FALCON and CASABLANCA — was to not only sustain his snowballing stardom, but to make him a ravaging sex symbol...
Because every woman here wants him... needs him, even... from a sexy librarian, a sexier bookstore employee (Dorothy Malone)... and even a hot female cab driver gets his number, literally, for a possible nighttime tryst...
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| Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in THE BIG SLEEP |
Yet Bogart's private eye Philip Marlowe — adapted from novelist Raymond Chandler — is far too busy after being hired by a rich old man blackmailed about his oldest, troublesome, party-girl daughter Martha Vickers...
But what really works is youngest daughter Lauren Bacall's interest in why Marlowe was hired in the first place — more than adding to the perpetually twisting maze that always occurs when the audience knows as much... and as little... as the investigating gumshoe...
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| Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in THE BIG SLEEP |
Who gets so far over his head with tons of last-names spouted in all directions, from or about characters either coming out of the woodwork or already dead, THE BIG SLEEP reaches a point that feels like the third-act wind-down less than halfway through, needing far more of what Lauren Bacall brings to the intentionally cluttered table...
She's a relaxing breath-of-fresh-air, even during all the running around that, while well-written, sublimely acted and economically directed, gets downright exhausting while Bacall, despite having secrets of her own, is the only thing that makes complete sense.
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Humphrey Bogart and Martha Vickers in THE BIG SLEEP
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| Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in THE BIG SLEEP |
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| Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in THE BIG SLEEP |
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| Humphrey Bogart and Martha Vickers in THE BIG SLEEP |
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| Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in THE BIG SLEEP |
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| Humphrey Bogart and Dorothy Malone in THE BIG SLEEP |
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| Humphrey Bogart and Joy Barlow in THE BIG SLEEP |
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