Real Men Love the Big Sleep

 
The dialogue

I realize I highlight "the dialogue" in nearly every Real Men Love article I've done since the series' inception, but I will never, ever be able to point out a film with more endlessly badass and quotable dialogue than The Big Sleep. Consider the following exchanges:

"You're not very tall are you?"
"Well, I, uh, I try to be."

"You know what he'll do when he comes back? Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling."

"How do you like your brandy, sir?"
"In a glass." 

"Did I hurt you very much, sugar?" 
"You, and every other man I've ever met."

"Somebody's always giving me guns."

That's old school noir dialogue we're talking about -- snappy, clever, and borderline poetic. It helps, of course, that the screenplay was co-written by William Goddamned Faulkner, of all people.

The needlessly complex plot

The story goes like this: Howard Hawks is filming and his crew runs into a plot hole. Who killed the chauffeur, Owen Taylor? After hours of double-checking the script, Hawks eventually decides to personally call Raymond Chandler, author of the original novel.  According to Chandler, “They sent me a wire…and dammit, I didn’t know either.”

The Big Sleep’s plot is full of twists and turns and convolutions, many of which are never fully explained, and yet it never loses its momentum or confuses the audience so much that you feel clueless: so long as Bogie looks confident and the plot keeps moving along, you’re perfectly content to sit through the entire film as subplot after subplot are thrown in your face like so many pies.

Additionally, the complex narrative makes The Big Sleep a pretty efficient douchebag detector: after watching the film with someone, ask them if they fully understood the plot. If they say “yes,” they’re either lying or they ignored half of the story. If they say “no,” they’re being honest, and are worth hanging around.

Wherever Philip goes, hotties follow

For some reason or another, the world of The Big Sleep is filled with beautiful women at every single goddamned turn. Every blue collar job, from taxi driver to bookstore clerk, is evidently performed by a gorgeous 1940’s gal – all of whom are intelligent and flirtatious, and all of whom (unsurprisingly) want to bone Humphrey Bogart. Hell with Sin City -- the world of The Big Sleep is the ultimate male noir fantasy.

Carmen Sternwood

 Of the superhot female supporting characters, none is more noteworthy than Carmen Sternwood, the story's quasi-femme fatale. Not because she's necessarily the hottest of the supporting females, mind you -- to my mind, that title goes to the book dealer -- but because of the story surrounding the actress who plays her. Martha Vickers was so damned hot and so damned good in The Big Sleep that, during pre-release screening of the film, Raymond Chandler himself singled out her performance as one of the best.

Warner Brothers was so surprised by Chandler's adoration for her -- this was supposed to be a Bogie/Bacall flick, not a Martha Vickers picture -- that they actually removed some of her scenes so that she wouldn't upstage Bacall, the film's main female lead.

That's right: Martha Vickers was literally too hot for the movie.

It’s Goddamn Bogie, for Chrissakes

Humphrey Bogart was, and will always be, a fucking badass. We're talking about a guy who played characters with personalities more or less similar to his: he was once arrested for public assault, and during the court hearing was asked by the judge if he was intoxicated on the night in question. He replied, “Who isn’t at three o’clock in the morning?”

Indeed, Bogie doesn’t really seem to be doing that much acting in The Big Sleep, and it benefits the film. He and Lauren Bacall were bumping uglies during the filming so their intensity is more or less real; he channels an effortless cool as Marlowe which always seems believable; he successfully flirts (and has presumed offscreen sex with) more than a few of the film’s women, despite the fact that he’s actually one hell of an ugly dude, when you come right down to it.

I dunno if The Big Sleep is Bogart’s best movie, but it’s definitely the best for sheer Bogie-ness; Humphrey’s portrayal of Philip Marlowe is everything a Bogart character should be. He is, in a sense, the ultimate man – smart, capable, confident, and simultaneously banging more women than he has fingers and toes.

Loudest gunshots ever

Anyone who’s seen more than a few films from the 1940’s knows that they aren’t particularly violent. Now, don’t worry – I’m not going to start the whole BS, condescending “films were better when they didn’t rely on blood and guts” tirade. Instead, this lack of violence usually necessitated that onscreen kills get their “punch” from a source other than blood or squibs.

When Marlowe is talking to a suspect about halfway through the film, the doorbell rings. Initially, the perp is unwilling to go to the door, for fear that Carmen has come back to kill him. Marlowe assuages his anxieties, however, by assuring him that he took Carmen’s gun. Somewhat relieved, the dude opens the door when

BLAM, MOTHERFUCKER

He gets shot through the door by one of the loudest guns in film history. This scene never ceases to get a reaction out of whoever I’m watching it with: it’s pretty difficult not to jump in your seat considering how strikingly loud the gunshot is when compared to the calm, almost quiet dialogue scenes which have preceded it. It’s not often one singles out a kill from a 1940’s film (most every gunshot death in the classic film noir genre consists of an actor grimacing, grasping his belly, and overdramatically falling to the ground), but this one is the definite exception.

Marlowe’s hidden gun stash

Marlowe has a little spring-loaded gun holder in his car.

I want one.

Bogie shows a punk kid what for

There’s nothing quite like watching a more experienced badass beat the living shit out of a snot-nosed youngster – just mentally picture Bruce Willis kicking Ashton Kutcher’s teeth out, and you’ll understand my meaning.

After the above Loudest Gunshot Ever, Marlowe pursues the assassin to a lonely street, where Marlowe takes his gun, points it at him, and tries to talk him into cooperation. The kid, as kids are wont to do, decides to try and fight his way out – but Bogie ain’t having none of his shit. He throws the kid off him and lays a trap; he tosses the kid’s gun to his feet, and dares him to pick it up. The kid stupidly does, and Bogie takes the opportunity to kick him in the motherfucking face.

Don’t fuck with a pro, son.

The “horse racing” scene

After completion, The Big Sleep was shelved for about a year, for reasons I’m not entirely aware of. Warner finally decided to release it after the success of a different Bogart/Bacall film, To Have and Have Not, hoping to capitalize on a chemistry between the two which the public seemed to eat up. There was a problem, though: since The Big Sleep, the two actors had publicly married, and their characterizations didn’t necessarily reflect this intimacy (evidently, Warner Bros didn’t believe in treating fiction and reality as two separate things).

To combat this “problem,” Warner had Hawks get back with the two stars and film what may arguably be one of the film’s best scenes: the horse racing discussion. As The Big Sleep was made during the time of the Hays code, characters couldn’t come right out and talk about sex; as a result, Marlowe and Vivian cleverly dance around the subject by using an incredibly intricate metaphor where horse racing stands in for sex. An excerpt:

Vivian: I'd say you don't like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.
Marlowe: You don't like to be rated yourself.
Vivian: I haven't met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?
Marlowe: Well, I can't tell till I've seen you over a distance of ground. You've got a touch of class, but I don't know how, how far you can go.
Vivian: A lot depends on who's in the saddle.  

Yeah. It’s that sort of a movie.

The love story

It’s bits like the horse racing scene that make The Big Sleep one of the few film noirs that women can enjoy just as easily as men, if not more so: there’s a definite romance between Marlowe and Vivian which drives much of the plot and, though it wasn’t in the original novel, gives a great deal more weight to the third act of the film.

I have positive (if anecdotal) evidence that The Big Sleep works pretty well as a panty-peeler on the right sort of woman. I told my friend to rent it for his first hangout/date thing with a girl he’d met, and after the horse racing scene, the two were already riding the waves of subtle sexuality into a full-blown makeout session.

Granted, they did miss the rest of the movie, which was a shame.

Marlowe kills ‘em with kindness

Well, kindness and a gun. Marlowe, like so many other noir detective heroes, is interesting in that he doesn’t really need to use violence to reach his ends; he’s generally smart and logical enough to think his way out of any situation (though he’s not above capping a few fools should the situation demand it).

In the film’s final scene, Marlowe sets up a meeting with Eddie Mars (the bad guy) to discuss the terms of something about blackmail or murder or whatever. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, Marlowe knows Mars will sooner kill him than give him what he wants, so he beats Mars to the meeting place and lays an awfully clever, low-maintenance trap for him.

After Mars comes in, assuming that he’s the first person to arrive, Marlowe comes out and searches him for a gun. Mars is clean – which means that Mars has about a dozen armed men outside, ready to blast Marlowe the moment he leaves the house. Rather than walk into the inevitable gunfight or take his chances by running, Marlowe shoots a couple of shots into the walls and floor; knowing Mars’ men didn’t expect Marlowe to be there yet, they’ll assume Marlowe has killed Eddie and they’ll immediately blast him once he gets into the open.  Of course, Marlowe kicks Eddie out the door and his boys, who evidently have some pretty shitty night vision, confuse him for Marlowe and open fire. The cops arrive, Mars is dead, Marlowe has managed to think his way out of a deathtrap yet again.

Granted, the plan has some problems – namely that Eddie and Marlowe look nothing alike – but still, it’s a pretty damn clever climax to a pretty damn clever film.