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Los
Angeles private detective Philip Marlowe is summoned to the mansion of
General Sternwood, a wealthy, aging invalid with two wild young daughters: the predatory, childish Carmen and the divorced Vivian Rutledge. Sternwood explains that Arthur Gwynne Geiger, a rare book dealer, is
demanding payment of Carmen's gambling debts. Sternwood adds that,
earlier, a man named Joe Brody made a similar request, which was handled by
ex-bootlegger Sean Regan, who has since disappeared. Although Marlowe
advises Sternwood to pay the money, he agrees to look into the matter for
him.
After he leaves the general, Vivian asks to
speak with him. She assumes that Sternwood hired Marlowe to look into
Regan's disappearance, but Marlowe reveals nothing. At Geiger's store,
Marlowe questions Agnes, the attendant, about rare books, and her confused
response convinces him that the store is a cover for some illegal activity.
The attractive bookseller across the street confirms his guess, and Marlowe
waits at her shop for Geiger to make an appearance. Marlowe follows
Geiger to his house, where, after a while, Carmen arrives.
Later, Marlowe hears a scream followed by
gunshots. Inside the house, Marlowe discovers a drugged Carmen with
Geiger's dead body. Marlowe also finds a hidden camera with no film in
it and a book containing the names of Geiger's blackmail victims.
After Marlowe drives Carmen home, he returns to Geiger's, but in the
meantime, the body has been removed.
Later, one of Sternwood's cars containing the
body of his chauffeur, Owen Taylor, is dredged out of the ocean. That
afternoon, Vivian tells Marlowe that blackmailers have demanded $5,000 for a
compromising photograph of Carmen taken at Geiger's the previous night.
When Marlowe asks if she can pay the money, Vivian says she might be able to
get it from Eddie Mars, the gambler whose wife ran off with Regan.
Marlowe then returns to Geiger's store, where he sees two men loading
Geiger's stock into their car and tails them to Brody's apartment.
Later, he learns that Mars owns the house where Geiger was shot.
That
evening, when Vivian reports that the blackmailers failed to contact her, a
skeptical Marlowe drives to Brody's apartment building. Vivian and
Agnes are both hiding inside, and Carmen arrives later, intending to shoot
Brody. After Marlowe disarms Carmen, Brody admits that he is the
blackmailer, but denies that he killed Geiger. Marlowe forces Brody to
give the photographic negative to Vivian, who then takes Carmen home.
Marlowe explains that Taylor, who was in love with Carmen, shot Geiger and
then accuses Brody of killing Taylor. Brody is about to tell Marlowe
what information Geiger had on the Sternwoods, when he responds to a knock
on the door and is shot. Marlowe catches the killer, Geiger's
assistant Carol Lundgren, who believed that Brody murdered Geiger and shot
him in retaliation.
Now that the murders seem to be solved, Vivian
tries to dismiss Marlowe, but he is convinced that Mars knows something
about Regan's disappearance. Marlowe's suspicions of Mars increase when
Vivian wins a lot of money gambling at Mars' club, only to have it stolen
later in what appears to Marlowe to be a phony holdup. When Vivian
later tells him that Regan has been found in Mexico, Marlowe believes that
she is trying to throw him off Regan's trail.
Subsequently, Marlowe learns from Agnes the
whereabouts of Mars's wife Mona, who was supposed to have run off with
Regan, and drives to the hideout, where he is taken prisoner by Mars's men.
Vivian is also hiding out at the house and, with her help, Marlowe shoots
Mars's hired killer Canino, and they make their escape. Marlowe then
lures Mars to Geiger's house and accuses him of blackmailing Vivian to keep
Carmen's murder of Regan secret. After Mars is mistakenly killed by
his own men, Marlowe tells the police that Mars murdered Regan and privately
exacts Vivian's promise that she will send Carmen away where she will be
prevented from hurting anyone else.
Notes
The film is based on the novel The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (New
York, 1939).
Both the version of The Big Sleep
released in 1946 and the 117 min. version completed in 1945 and restored by
the UCLA Film and Television Archives were viewed. The above synopsis
was based on the 1946 version. Memos included in the Warner Bros.
Collection at the USC Cinema-Television Library add the following
information about the production:
Nina Foch tested for the role of "Carmen." Modern sources credit
Chuck Hansen as Assistant Director. Due to
Humphrey Bogart's affair with co-star
Lauren Bacall, his marital problems escalated during filming, and his
drinking often resulted in his being unable to work.
The picture took seventy-six days to
film—thirty-four days behind its forty-two day schedule. The film was
completed on January 12, 1945 and was shown to American servicemen overseas,
but was not released in the United States at that time. With the end
of World War II, Warners pushed back the release of The Big Sleep in
favor of its completed war-themed films, among these films was
Confidential Agent, which also starred Bacall. After her
performance in that film was panned by the critics, agent Charles K. Feldman
convinced Jack L. Warner that another failure would ruin Bacall's career.
In a letter dated November 16, 1945, Feldman wrote Warner that "...if Bacall
receives the same type of general reviews and criticisms on The Big Sleep,
which she definitely will receive unless changes are made, you might lose
one of your most important assets. Though the additional scenes will
only cost in the neighborhood of probably $25,000 or $50,000, in my opinion
this should be done even if the cost should run to $250,000." Feldman
advised Warner to "give the girl at least three or four additional scenes
with Bogart of the insolent and provocative nature that she had in To
Have and Have Not."
On January 2, 1946, HR reported that
Hawks, Bogart and Bacall were shooting added scenes, and that much of the
script had been rewritten. As the studio did not want to release a
longer film, scenes were cut from the 1945 version. Among the scenes
cut were one in which "Philip Marlowe" searches the location of "Geiger's"
murder.
Another sequence, in which Marlowe brings the
drugged "Carmen" home and advises the butler to give her an alibi, was
replaced with a similar scene during which Marlowe gives the same advice to
"Vivian," thus allowing the characters to establish romantic potential.
The longest cut was of a nine-minute sequence in which Marlowe explains the
series of murders to suspicious police detective "Cronjager" and district
attorney "Wilde" (both of these roles were cut from the 1946 release).
In the 1945 print, a short scene in which Vivian, wearing an unbecoming hat
with a veil, meets Marlowe at his office and pays him off, was replaced by a
longer, more sensual encounter between them at a nightclub during which they
trade double entendres about horse racing. In a brief scene in the
1946 version, Carmen is waiting for Marlowe at his apartment when he returns
from taking Vivian home. This substituted for the 1945 scene in which
Wilde asks Marlowe to drop the Sternwood case. Finally, the climactic
scene in "Eddie Mars'" hideout was rewritten to emphasize the character of
Vivian. In this sequence, Eddie Mars's wife is performed by Peggy
Knudson, rather than Patricia Clarke, who played the role in the 1945
version. Bacall received some favorable notices for her performance,
although the NYT commented that "she still hasn't learned to act."
Three months after the film was finished, Bacall and Bogart were married.
Modern sources add the following information
about the production: Warner Bros. paid $10,000 for the rights to
Raymond Chandler's novel. Many critics commented on the confusing plot
of the film, especially the fact that the murderer of the "Sternwood's"
chauffeur is never clearly identified. This was true even in the 1945
version with its extended explanation in Wilde's office. Modern
sources blame these problems in part on the fact that co-writers Leigh
Brackett and William Faulkner wrote alternate sections of the script and
left the project as soon as they turned in the final draft. Jules
Furthman was then called in to cut and condense their work. Hawks also
rewrote several scenes. In an interview, Hawks said, "I never figured
out what was going on....After that got by, I said, 'I'm never going to
worry about being logical again.'" In a modern interview, Hawks said
that the PCA officials "read the script and they didn't care for the end
Chandler wrote. I said, 'Why don't you suggest a better one?'
And they did. It was a lot more violent, it was everything I wanted,
and I made it and was very happy about it." In a September 27, 1944
letter to Jack Warner, included in the MPAA/PCA file on the film, PCA head
Joseph I. Breen objected to the script's "suggestion that Carmen is being
blackmailed by means of some nude or lewd photographs." However, the
suggestion is present in the released film.
Chandler's novel also provided the source for a
1978 United Artists film The Big Sleep which was set in London and
starred
Robert Mitchum. Much of the film was parodied in Larry Gelbart's
play City of Angels.
Music includes "And Her Tears Flowed Like
Wine," music and lyrics by Joe Greene, Stanley Kenton and Charles
Lawrence. |
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