The Big Sleep (film) 1946

 

The Big Sleep (Dir. Howard Hawks, 1946) falls just short of being film noir, according to Bruce Crowther, "despite such powerful and decidedly noir scenes as that in which the villainous Lash Canino …forces the hapless Harry Jones… to drink poison." 19 The movie was scripted by William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett, and starred the forty-five year old Bogart and his new love, twenty-year-old Lauren Bacall, who played Vivian Sternwood. The scenes between them have been praised by numerous critics as the definition of "screen chemistry," but they also note that Bogart simply plays himself. He reduces Marlowe's "essential wryness" to the "jokey cynicism … used in his portrayal of Sam Spade," writes Crowther. 20 A remake (Dir. Michael Winner, 1978), starring Robert Mitcheum and Sarah Miles, attempted to capitalize on Mitchum's success in the 1975 version of Farewell (see above), but is set in England and not considered noir by most critics.

 
 
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Topics & Titles
  • African-American detective novel
  • The Big Sleep
  • Black Mask magazine
  • Humphrey Bogart
  • Comics, Radio &TV
  • Cotton Comes to Harlem
  • the detective code
  • Double Indemnity
  • evolution of genre
  • Farewell, My Lovely
  • female authors
  • femme fatale
  • The Galton Case
  • High Sierra
  • GermanExpressionism
  • The Glass Key
  • hero/ heroines
  • imagery
  • The Long Goodbye
  • Maltese Falcon (film)
  • Maltese Falcon(novel)
  • Memento
  • The Postman Always Rings Twice
  • The Public Enemy
  • Red Harvest
  • The Underground Man
  • The Usual Suspects
Authors
  • W. R .Burnett
  • James M. Cain
  • Paul Cain
  • Raymond Chandler
  • Michael Connelly
  • Lucha Corpi
  • James Ellroy
  • Erle Stanley Gardner
  • Sue Grafton
  • Katharine Ann Green
  • Denise Hamilton
  • Dashiell Hammett
  • G. Anthony Haywood
  • George V. Higgins
  • Chester Himes
  • Stuart Kaminsky
  • Faye Kellerman
  • Jonathan Kellerman
  • Elmore Leonard
  • Ross Macdonald
  • Rochelle Majer
  • Horace McCoy
  • Walter Mosley
  • Michael Nava
  • Frederick Lewis Nebel
  • Kem Nunn
  • W.Oursler/M. Scott
  • Sarah Paretsky
  • Robert B. Parker
  • T. Jefferson Parker
  • Allen Pinkerton
  • Edgar Allan Poe
  • Mickey Spillane
  • Jim Thompson
  • Francois Vidocq
  • Joseph Wambaugh
  • Raoul Whitfield
  • Cornell Woolrich