The Big Sleep

The storyline of The Big Sleep lost me completely. I watched the 1946 Theatrical Version, and I think I might have to watch the Prerelease Version--"whose plot and resolution are more linear" according to the DVD backcover description-- in order to understand what happened. However, as the backcover further describes, ". . . Style is what The Big Sleep is all about," so style is what I intend to focus on for now.

What I know of film noir comes not from my own experience of watching an extensive list of films of this style but from several sources I have read, including The Story of Film and random websites. From what I gather, The Big Sleep can safely be described as a film noir. The use of low-key lighting created shadows that exuded an atmosphere of mystery and suspense and worked really well with the black-and-white film. I was practically coughing throughout the movie because of the illusion that the lighting created of a wall of cigarette smoke everywhere all the time. I saw some clips on Youtube of colorized scenes from the movie, and the feeling just wasn't the same: There didn't seem to be as much depth to the scenes nor is the contrast of colors and objects as obvious, e.g. it is much more difficult to see cigarete smoke in the color version than in the b&w version.

What also added to the atmosphere and depth of the film was the deep staging. Mark Cousins describes in The Story of Film that films noirs are an "offshoot" of deep staging, and a still from a film is shown to demonstrate that multiple characters are often staggered in the same shot to create a sense of depth (p. 195). It allows for more than one action to be in focus during a shot, and this technique was used several times in The Big Sleep, such as the scene in Joe Brody's room or the one in which Marlowe is tied up.

Cousins also notes that director Howard Hawks did not experiment much with the camera: Hawks “seldom filmed from other than shoulder height” and refrained from using dolly shots among other things (p.144). This no-nonsense style of filming makes for linear storytelling, which is desirable in a movie such as The Big Sleep that has such a complicated storyline. The visual aspect does not distract from the narrative, which is extremely important in this film because there is so much action that takes place that would be easy to confuse.

What kept The Big Sleep moving was not the way it was shot but the dialogue. Whereas many filmmakers would use the pacing of shots to keep a film progressing, Hawks used the pacing of the dialogue. Bogart and Bacall would deliver one snappy line after another, dynamic in an otherwise static two shot. Cousins explains that during the making of Twentieth Century (1934), “Hawks wanted to use a new way of natural, but fast comedy acting . . .” (p.142). He continues that in Bringing up Baby (1938), Hawks made sure that the actors’ lines “overlapped each other’s dialogue” and that “this had not been done so emphatically before and it added to the realism of film acting in comedy and drama thereafter” (p.145). This sort of natural and realistic acting that Hawks directed and perfected in the decade leading up to The Big Sleep is evident throughout the film, especially when Bogart and Bacall are together.

Interesting to note are the characters in The Big Sleep. Vivian Rutledge is not the stereotypical femme fatale that is infamous in films noirs, nor is Philip Marlowe the weak man who falls into the woman’s trap. Although Cousins argues that this is the case, I disagree. Marlowe had a completely cool head when it came to women, Vivian did not “[cause his] downfall,” and I can hardly believe that Marlowe had a “weak, damaged or repressed erotic imagination” with the way women were throwing themselves at him (p.198). Instead, Hawks just made his woman “tough,” as Cousins himself earlier states (p.143). These important distinctions might make The Big Sleep a little more interesting than the average film noir.

Otis Ferguson explains in the essay “Citizen Welles,” “The real art of movies concentrates on getting the right story and the right actors, the right kind of production and their smoothing everything out” (p.135). This quote perfectly sums up the making of The Big Sleep. A year after filming, several new shots that featured Bogart and Bacall were shot and added to the original movie. The Big Sleep DVD included a feature that showed the difference that the new scenes added: More flirtation was added in Reel 7, the dialogue in Reel 8 was made more personal, and better shots of Bacall were taken for Reel 11. The result, according to Roger Ebert, is “a lust story with a plot about a lot of other things,” much more exciting than the less risqué film it had been a year earlier. Thus The Big Sleep is a big lesson about how to smooth out the story, the actors, and the production in the right way to make a lasting example of cinematic art.