The Big Sleep (BFI Film Classics)

The Big Sleep (BFI Film Classics)





Illustrated Released in 1946, Howard Hawks' adaptation of Raymond Chandler reunited Bogart and Bacall and gave them two of their most famous roles. The mercurial but ever-manipulative Hawks dredged humour and happiness out of film noir. "Give him a story about more murders than anyone can keep up with, or explain," David Thomson writes, "and somehow he made a paradise." When it was first shown, The Big Sleep was coldly received. So, as Thomson reveals, Hawks shot extra scenes, "fun" scenes, to replace ones in which the films murders had been explained, and in so doing left the plot unresolved. If this was accidental, Thomson argues, it also signalled a change in the nature of the Hollywood cinema: The Big Sleep inaugurates a postmodern, camp, satirical view of movies being about other movies that extends to the New Wave and Pulp Fiction.This is the first book-length consideration of the classic 1946 movie The Big Sleep and the first published book to compare it to the 1945 cut of the movie, which has been restored and released. David Thomson discusses the making of the film as well as the careers and romance of its stars, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. He also looks into the psyches of its director and screenwriters. Thomson beautifully describes a classic in progress, tracking "the way in which fantasizing, power plays, and maneuver affected the making of the film." Along the way, Thomson meditates about why The Big Sleep has attained its mythic status and why it continues to move him so powerfully.









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