THE FOURTH IN AN INCREASINGLY LESS OCCASIONAL SERIES
FORGOTTEN FILMS THAT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED
Okay, so we’re four in and I already know what number 5 will be. However let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. We have number 4 to look at, and what a number 4 it is. This is the first absolute classic that I have covered in these pages; true, both “Sex, Lies and Videotape” and “Manhattan” have garnered much critical acclaim from critics and cinema goers alike but they still aren’t regarded yet as classics, whereas as today’s film is. It is a film from the golden age of black and white cinema and is a movie that seems to savour the shadows. It’s not really a noir film but the subject matter is certainly black; a young heiress being blackmailed over pornographic photo’s in a seedy world fueled by sex, drugs and murder with a criminal overload overseeing all of it behind a mask of respectability. It is probably the film’s stars best ever film, although it is often overlooked in favour of a rousing patriotic number. It is littered with great lines and if you don’t know what it is by now then you really need to see it before you suffer . . .
THE BIG SLEEP (1946)
(Love this poster)
Black and white thrillers don’t come any sexier than this. Bogart and Bacall’s second film together is fraught with sexual tension between the two leads that has rarely been surpassed. In their early scenes together the dialogue is rich with animosity and yet it is totally apparent that they are into each other. It is one of the many appealing aspects of this tale of a Los Angeles underbelly and a conspiracy that drags everyone into its sticky web.
Humphrey Bogart plays jaded private detective Phillip Marlowe, hired to help disabled former bounder, scoundrel and all-round gadabout, General Sternwood, who is immediately likeable in his curmudgeonry (if that’s even a word) with a blackmail plot his youngest daughter, Carmen, has become ensnared. This gets solved relatively quickly (but not without a fairly decent body-count) but it’s the disappearance of the General’s friend (son almost), Sean Regan, that piques Marlowe’s interest, and the more he keeps digging the more people tell him to stop. The General’s second daughter, Vivien, is drawn to Marlowe but caught so far in the conspiracy she has to continually push him away, which just makes him all the more curious as to what really happened, leading to a sensational ending.
The big sleep was then, and it is now even, a huge influence on the the thriller genre. It’s tentacles of influence stretch all the way up to “L.A. Confidential” and even “The Departed” in its depiction of a sleazy underbelly which occupies and infiltrates every level of the social scale. It’s a vile world that affects the good and the bad in equal measure (something we’ve seen a lot of in the UK over the last few months) and Marlowe is cynical enough to know he can’t escape that world but smart enough to not get involved.
It’ a cracking performance from Bogey and he and Bacall have never been better than they were in this movie. The dialogue is sumptuous between them and although William Faulkner and Raymond Chandler get most nods from the critics for the script it is interesting to note that Leigh Brackett’s is largely overlooked for her work and yet the echoes of “The Big Sleep” can also be seen in “The Empire Strikes Back” with the relationship between Han and Leia. “Being held by you isn’t quite enough to get me excited” “Sorry, sweetheart. Haven’t time for anything else” and “You go too far” “Oh. Those are hard words to throw at a man, especially when he’s walking out of your bedroom” are almost interchangeable, such are their feel and construction. So, with its quality in no doubt why does it make the list?
Well, as I mentioned earlier with Bogart there really is only one film that everyone regards as “The One” and that sadly is “Casablanca”, which features many of Bogart’s most memorable lines. But in his career of course he did make a number of films that were worthy of remembering including “To have and Have not”, “The African Queen”, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”, “The Caine Mutiny”, “The Maltese Falcon” and of course, my favourite “The Big Sleep”. It is one of those films I never tire of recommending as it is a timeless classic that improves with age, and if imitation is the highest form of flattery then its echoes in films like “L.A. Confidential” and “The Departed” to name two of the most obvious films that owe a debt to “The Big Sleep”, show very much that not only that they still do make em like they used, but that when they do, it usually works out pretty well.
I would usually put a trailer here but as You Tube have bugger all that's useful sadly, you'll just have to take my word for all of the above.
I would usually put a trailer here but as You Tube have bugger all that's useful sadly, you'll just have to take my word for all of the above.
Nuff said.
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