The Big Sleep (1946)

Directed by Howard Hawks. Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Martha Vickers, John Ridgely, Sonia Darrin, Regis Toomey, Dorothy Malone, Elisha Cook Jr., Charles Waldron, Charles D. Brown, Peggy Knudsen, Bob Steele, Louis Jean Heydt.

Dynamite film version of the Raymond Chandler crime novel with tough but contemplative private eye Philip Marlowe (Bogart) taking on a convoluted case involving a dry but sultry gambler (Bacall), her unruly nymphet sister (Vickers), and a handful of characters who will be named repeatedly but almost never be seen onscreen (in some cases because they’re dead before they ever get a chance). The mystery itself is nearly impossible to follow (even Chandler can’t explain it all), but when the juicy, hardboiled dialogue is this terrific, who cares? Bolstered significantly by Hawks’ robust yet laconic direction and the snappy characterizations of shifty types as likely to climb down from the penthouse as they are to crawl out of the sewer, but it’s the prolonged, stylish conversations that make this one an all-timer, including the famed double entrendre-slathered exchange between Bogie and Bacall that contemporary writers of vulgar eroticism could learn a thing or twelve from (“A lot depends on who’s in the saddle”). Rarely has a noir film been populated by so many dishy dames, either…almost to the point of parody—even Marlowe’s cab driver is a babe! Co-scripted by novelist William Faulkner, who previously worked on To Have and Have Not (also with Hawks, Bogie and Bacall); music by Max Steiner. Originally completed for release in 1945, and shown to servicemen during the later days of WWII, but then it was extensively edited with reshoots that dropped logic in favor of more scintillating scenes between the romantically-involved stars.

93/100