The Big Sleep (1946 Film)

Reception

The Big Sleep premiered in New York City on August 23, 1946,[1] before being released on August 31.[1][2] According to Warner Bros. records, the film cost $1.6 million to produce, and earned $3,493,000 domestically and $1,375,000 foreign.[3]

Critical response

Contemporary reviews

At the time of its 1946 release, Bosley Crowther said the film leaves the viewer "confused and dissatisfied", points out that Bacall is a "dangerous looking female" ..."who still hasn't learned to act" and notes:

The Big Sleep is one of those pictures in which so many cryptic things occur amid so much involved and devious plotting that the mind becomes utterly confused. And, to make it more aggravating, the brilliant detective in the case is continuously making shrewd deductions which he stubbornly keeps to himself. What with two interlocking mysteries and a great many characters involved, the complex of blackmail and murder soon becomes a web of utter bafflement. Unfortunately, the cunning script-writers have done little to clear it at the end.[17]

Time film critic James Agee called the film "wakeful fare for folks who don't care what is going on, or why, so long as the talk is hard and the action harder" but insists that "the plot's crazily mystifying, nightmare blur is an asset, and only one of many"; it calls Bogart "by far the strongest" of its assets and says Hawks, "even on the chaste screen...manages to get down a good deal of the glamorous tawdriness of big-city low life, discreetly laced with hints of dope addiction, voyeurism and fornication" and characterizing Lauren Bacall's role as "an adolescent cougar".[18]

Comparison of the 1945 original cut and 1946 release

Between the 1945 cut and the 1946 release, critics have become divided as to which version is superior. Some consider the 1945 cut to be the better, partly due to the inclusion of a scene at the District Attorney's office where the facts of the case, thus far, are laid out. Others consider the 1946 release to be the better due to its focusing more on the Bogart-Bacall pairing.[19] Chandler praised Martha Vickers' performance in the original 1945 cut, feeling that she overshadowed Bacall's performance. He felt that the deletion of many of her scenes in the 1946 release were done to enhance Bacall's performance.[20]

Film critic Roger Ebert, who described the movie as being about the "process of a criminal investigation, not its results",[19] preferred the 1946 version and said,

The new scenes [of the 1946 version] add a charge to the film that was missing in the 1945 version; this is a case where "studio interference" was exactly the right thing. The only reason to see the earlier version is to go behind the scenes, to learn how the tone and impact of a movie can be altered with just a few scenes... As for the 1946 version that we have been watching all of these years, it is one of the great films noir, a black-and-white symphony that exactly reproduces Chandler's ability, on the page, to find a tone of voice that keeps its distance, and yet is wry and humorous and cares.[19]

In a 1997 review, Eric Brace of The Washington Post wrote that the 1945 original had a "slightly slower pace than the one released a year later and a touch less zingy interplay between Bogart and Bacall, but it's still an unqualified masterpiece".[16]

Accolades

In 2003, AFI named Philip Marlowe the 32nd greatest hero in film.[21] The film placed 202nd on the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll of the greatest films ever made and also received two directors' votes.[22]

The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited The Big Sleep as one of his 100 favorite films.[23] Roger Ebert included the film in his list of "Great Movies" and wrote,

Working from Chandler's original words and adding spins of their own, the writers (William Faulkner, Jules Furthman and Leigh Brackett) wrote one of the most quotable of screenplays: it's unusual to find yourself laughing in a movie not because something is funny but because it's so wickedly clever.[24]


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