1946, United States. Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone, Peggy Knudsen, Regis Toomey, Charles Waldron, Charles D. Brown, Bob Steele, Elisha Cook Jr., Louis Jean Heydt. Directed by Howard Hawks. Written by William Faulkner. Purchase from Amazon.com.

It's not every day you see a line-up like this: original book by Raymond Chandler, screenplay by William Faulkner, with Howard Hawks directing and Humphrey Bogart in the lead role as iconic hardboiled private eye Philip Marlowe. That's an all-star assembly of talent if ever there was one. Still, tackling such a great book is always risky business, and since The Big Sleep is one of my favorites, I was anxious to see what they'd do with the source material, which isn't unfilmable by any stretch of the imagination but does contain certain quirks and oddities that would make it tricky material to handle.

No need to worry, because the film adaptation succeeds at faithfully following most of the book while taking a few Hollywood liberties that don't betray the original story -- though I'd have been happier with the book's ending being shot instead of the film's revision, but that's minor for me.

Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe (Bogart, who was custom made for the role) is hired by an wealthy old man to suss out the validity of a blackmail attempt and determine whether the man should just pay up or try to get rough with the blackmailer. At the center of the controversy is one of the old man's two daughters (Martha Vickers). She's a wild one with all sorts of kinks the old man either doesn't know about or, more likely, simply pretends not to know about. The other sister, Vivian (Lauren Bacall) is more reserved, though like anyone in this type of film, she too has her vices and secrets (gambling being the primary one). She is convinced that her father has hired Marlowe to find a missing man, a sentiment shared by many of the cops, thugs, hustlers, and crime bosses Marlowe encounters as he tracks the blackmail scheme and, invariably, gets involved in a rind that includes murder, pornography, and kidnapping -- among other things. Chandler always packed his books with a dizzying number of outlandish yet still believable plot twists, and Faulkner's screenplay does its best to cram as many as possible into the 114 minute running time.

So what does the movie do right? Pretty much everything. In my opinion, this is Bogart's best role -- better even than Casablanca and Treasure of the Sierra Madre, better even than High Sierra or The Maltese Falcon. Bogart's possibly my favorite actor (in as much as I can make up my mind about such things), and he's perfect for the role of the world-weary Marlowe, who puts on a tough guy act but whose character is underscored by a sense of chivalry and melancholy loneliness. Bogart captures all the aspects that make Marlowe such a compelling literary character, and he handles the quips and comedy -- which are an equally essential part of Marlowe -- with perfect timing and delivery. The best compliment you can pay an actor inhabiting the skin of a literary character, as I see things, is to say that the actor plays it the way you would want to see it played. That's what Bogart does. He says the lines the way I wanted them to be said, perfectly and absolutely.

His partner in crime is Lauren Bacall, still an acting neophyte at the time of this production and in rather a precarious situation. Although she'd received accolades for her role in her debut film, To Have and Have Not, critics savaged her sophomore role in Confidential Agent. If she got nailed with another round of negative reviews, it would pretty much mean the end of her career (as there were no Sci-Fi Channel Original Movies at the time). As it's told, her work in The Big Sleep was less than stellar, resulting in her agent requesting that Hawks go back and refilm certain scenes to give Bacall a second chance and avoid what could be a career-ending performance. Since Hawks obviously had a vested interest in making the best movie possible, he agreed and months after shooting had wrapped, he rounded up key members of the cast and reshot a number of scenes.

The result was exactly what everyone hoped for. The chemistry between Bacall and Bogart crackles with energy, and not just because they would become eventual real-life husband and wife. Cinema is littered with the corpses of husband-wife duets in which their characters exhibit absolutely no connection and chemistry. It helps, of course, that Bogie and Bacall had Chandler's dialogue to work with. Faulkner sticks pretty closely to a lot of Chandler's language, and when he veers from the source, he still manages to perfectly blend new material with the original. The back and forth between the principles is wonderful, easily one of the best pairings in film history. I'm not even a very big fan of Lauren Bacall, but with close direction, a strong script, and Bogart to bounce things off of, she turns in a world-class performance.

That said, I prefer the original cut of the film, at least in certain regards. There are scenes in it -- specifically between Marlowe, the cops, and the assistant DA -- that are crucial to making more sense of the plot. I've never understood why the later version of the film cut that scene. The DVD release contains both versions of the film. The later version is definitely better for Bacall; the earlier version is definitely better for the plot. As it's cut in the 1946 "final" release, the plot becomes even more incomprehensible than in the 1944 version. But it's not like Chandler's source material was all that straight-forward. Reportedly, Howard Hawks contacted Chandler himself to sort out some details, specifically about who killed the Sternwood family butler. Upon rereading his own story, reviewing his notes, and thinking about it a while, Chandler told Hawks he wasn't really sure. I'm thankful both cuts are on the disc, because they're both spectacular films.

Marlowe's running narrative is what makes Chandler's books good, but the assortment of deliciously bizarre and seedy supporting characters is what often elevates them to the sublime. Hawks relies on a host of solid supporting actors to bring the world of Philip Marlowe to life. The key to Chandler's books has always been that they take place in a slightly askew universe. Certain coincidences occur to propel the story forward, but within the confines of the world he constructs, Chandler's stories follow the rules they set for themselves. The Big Sleep is a world of decadent libertines and crazy nympho girls, of harried cops and slick gamblers, petty blackmailers and three-time-losers. Faulkner's screenplay doesn't leave any of them out, though they do crank down some of the more controversial aspects of the book to placate the Hayes Code censors (the homosexual relationship between two of the supporting characters is overt in the book but only hinted at in the movie).

As I said, Faulker was smart enough to realize how brilliant Chandler's original novel was, and he doesn't monkey around with it too much (the story goes that Hawks was given $50,000 to get the rights to The Big Sleep. He managed to get them for $5,000 and then pocketed the remainder). There are minor differences here and there, but the only major change is to the ending. The identity of a killer is changed, certain guilty characters are made less guilty, and instead of Marlowe heading off alone into the sunset, he gets a sunnier finale. It is Hollywood, after all, and although the era and private eye aspect of the movie means it's inevitably tagged as film noir, it's not really nihilistic enough to really deserve the moniker (Chandler's books, for that matter, are also generally more comical and his protagonists nicer and more heroic than you'd get in "true" noir fiction). Faulkner's alteration of the ending, while obviously parting substantially from the book, isn't bad. I didn't see anything wrong with the original ending, but I guess if you have to have a happier wrap-up, this one is pretty good.

Movies like this are why I keep watching movies. OK, yeah. Movies like this and Holy Virgin Versus the Evil Dead. It's rare that you have so many brilliant players hitting on all cylinders -- too many geniuses often results in an unholy mess, and while The Big Sleep certainly flirts with confusion, it's never incoherent. You just have to work at the plot a little. It's just about as close to perfection as a film can come.

Labels: Director: Howard Hawks, Film Noir, Netflix Diary, Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Year: 1946