They don’t make ‘em like this any more – and they didn’t often make ‘em this good back then: Bogart, Bacall, Hawks, Chandler, Faulkner, Brackett, Furthmann… Martha Vickers is stunningly good as the trampy daughter of the old colonel; Bogart is brilliant. I loved Dorothy Malone in her little scene too – the definitive sexy girl with glasses who works in a second hand book store (who gets turned on by Bogart’s brains – notice how she’s not really interested in him until he reveals he knows a lot about books). Hawks was so good at those sort of great scenes – indeed The Big Sleep is a collection of terrific scenes more than anything else: Bogart meeting Vickers; Bogart and the Colonel in the greenhouse; Bogart and Malone; Bogart camping it up in a bookstore; Bogart and Bacall having fun on the phone; “It wasn’t intentional” “Try it some time”.
The scenes are less good in the middle, which is why the film drags a little around there. Indeed, I was surprised how slow it got; I think the memory of those opening scenes is what carries it through - the structure certainly isn’t as sound as a, say, Chinatown. I’ve seen this a few times and can never follow the plot; also I get the whole Eddie-Mars-running-a-nightclub-and-having-an-ex-wife thing mixed up with the Howard da Silva character in The Blue Dahlia. But it really picks up in the last half hour with the introduction of Elisha Cook Jnr (he has a great death scene – there you go with the scene thing again). And it’s got a fantastic finale. (NB This factor is why you have to be careful remaking films like this – they depend so much on casting and scenes rather than a strong story).
The Bogart-Bacall combination is strong, if not as magical as in To Have and Have Not – although that is a bit unfair because in that one they were falling in love (just like Hepburn and Tracy had never-to-be-repeated oomph in Woman of the Year). But all the performances are excellent – not just the leads, but the supporting characters: and this is from a cast which doesn’t feature big names. Just look at the actors who play Eddie Mars, Bernie the cop, the dodgy girl in the book store… they’re all really good. Such was the skill of Hawks.
There are lots of scenes of women finding Bogart attractive – Vickers, Bacall, Malone, a woman in a library, a female cab driver, a waitress, cigarette girl. Hawks says this was him making fun of the genre, but there doesn’t seem too much winking at the audience. I think they simply wanted to show him being a stud. There is lot of sex here – not just the Vickers character, the dialogue between Bogart and Bacall is dripping with innuendo. It’s also violent – Bogart kicks a henchman in the face, gets knocked out several times, and flings the baddie out of a room to his death.
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