I love the work of Humphrey Bogart. As an actor, he often comes across as the coolest guy in the room. He’s the unlikely romantic lead, a normal or average-looking guy who somehow makes the ladies swoon. He looks tired all the time, but he has more than enough energy to do what needs to be done. He can be a bit cocky when he needs to be, but often is just a smart guy who loves a good drink.
I found The Big Sleep included with TCM on Hulu last night, I had previously read the book, and this time around the female lead was Bogie’s longtime wife Lauren Bacall. You bet your sweet Aunt Petunia I was gonna fill that hole in my pop culture knowledge.
Private detective Philip Marlowe (Bogart) is hired to look into a blackmail case for a dying old man. Said old man is the wealthy General Sternwood. Sternwood has two daughters. The younger, more immature one Carmen (Martha Vickers) took a pass at Marlowe before he even got to her father and is the source of the blackmail. General Sternwood doesn’t care what she did. He isn’t dumb, and he can’t do much of anything anyway. He just wants Marlowe to make the problem go away forever.
But then there’s the other daughter, Vivian (Bacall). Vivian wants to know what exactly Marlowe was hired to do as she presumably assumes its to find her father’s missing protege (her long missing husband in the novel, one of many changes Hollywood censorship made to Raymond Chandler’s novel). Marlowe won’t tell her because she isn’t the client. That isn’t his way. He has an unspoken code and will follow the case until General Sternwood, and only General Sternwood, tells him to stop.
Somehow, Marlowe’s investigation is a lot more complex than it should be. Carmen and Vivian have a habit of just appearing where they need to (including one instance that works in a chance for Bacall to sing a song in a movie that isn’t remotely a musical). Bodies start to pile up, people act suspicious, and there’s gambling, booze, and drugs flowing all over. Marlowe will take a couple beatings to get to the truth. It helps that, unlike many of the people he’s pursuing, Marlowe comes across as a decent man trying to do the right thing. But this is film noir. That sort of thing will only get you hurt one way or the other.
Now, I’d seen Bogart play detective before, particularly for director John Huston. But this time around the director was Howard Hawks. Hawks, as a filmmaker, is known for a few things but one of them was the inclusion of tough-talking women. And I noticed there are a lot of women in supporting roles in this movie, many of them there to openly flirt with Marlowe. A woman cab driver will give Marlowe a business card and when asked if she is available all day and night says he should call at night because she works during the day. Cocktail waitresses at an underground casino seem to compete to answer his questions fastest. And my personal favorite, Marlowe has a rather flirtatious conversation with a woman running a bookstore across the street from a rare book store he’s keeping an eye on. And none of these women come across as some sort of damsel in distress types. They see something they want (Bogart) and make some moves to get it. Or, at least as much as 1946 will allow them to get.
But then there’s Lauren Bacall. She and Bogart have some obvious screen chemistry–not something every real-life couple has been known to convey on movie screens–and she equals him for screen presence as much as 40s script conventions will allow. The push and pull between the two makes the movie in many ways, and this is a movie that features shoot-outs, alleyway beatings, blackmail, and 80% of the female characters all taking turns throwing themselves at the world-weary private eye. I like the way the standard Hawks woman character makes changes to the Bogart noir style, but I love the way Bacall does it when she’s doing it.
Grade: A
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