THE BIG SLEEP
(Warner Bros.)
WENTY-FOUR hours after seeing this film, I can easily recall some of the wisecracks in it, but even to save my life from one of Mr. Raymond Chandler’s
Sangsters 1 couldnt remember exactly how the story goes. I doubt if I am alone in my perplexity: leaving the theatre one picked up in several quarters the remark, with variations, "Yes, but what I didn’t. understand was .. ." Actually I have little doubt that the plot all fits together as snugly as a jigsaw with none of the pieces missing. There was probably an adequate reason, if not a good one, why all those corpses were left littering the screen, why all those unworthy citizens were bashed up and bumped off: such mayhem and slaughter, though wanton in one sense, was not wholly irrational, and the murder of the glass-eyed blackmailer in his Chinese bungalow clearly had a linkif one could find it-with the messy demise of the unfortunate little crook (Elisha Cook Jr.) who was forced to drink poison about one hour later because, apparently, he knew too much. But knew too much about what? That’s the question. I’m not saying it can’t be answered: Private Detective Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) seemed to be satisfied, about one hour later still, that he had all the answers, and no one could
deny that Marlowe was a pretty efficient sort of sleuth. Yet long after he had the case all sewn up, as they say, the audience (including your critic) was still groping to pick up dropped stitches. The Big Sleep, based on a novel by Raymond Chandler and produced and directed by Howard Hawks, is a striking example of a type of entertainment now flooding the screen. Its highly complex plot-pattern of homicide, sadistic violence,. and erotic suggestion is as formal and stylised as ballet. Everybody talks tough (and often wittily) and acts tougher; every few minutes the camera pauses gloatingly to look on while somebody is done to death or merely kicked in the face and punched in the kidneys; of the three women in the story, one (played by Martha Vickers) is a nymphomaniac, another (Dorothy Malone, as the girl in the bookstore) seems to verge on the same state, and the third (Lauren Bacall), though less vicious, is also far from being the type one would like one’s daughter to emulate. And yet The Big Sleep, for all its hints of depravity, its violent action, and its determined pretence of realism, remains basically as artificial as a puppet-play. There are plenty of efficient figures in the cast, led by Humphrey Bogart, but there are no real characters in the story, for there just isn’t time or scope for any true development of character to take place. There is incessant movement but (and here the ballet simile must be discarded) it is movement without real significance. With all its grave faults, I prefer a film like Of Human Bondage, because there at least some study of character is permitted and unpleasant human behaviour is not intended to be savoured solely for its own sake.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19470411.2.49.1.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 407, 11 April 1947, Page 24
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518THE BIG SLEEP New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 407, 11 April 1947, Page 24
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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