Movie Review: The Big Sleep

[imported_The Vibesman]

Off the top of my head, if you like Bogart, get The Desperate Hours. Plays a bad guy, which is fun. Movie was remade w/ Mickey Rourke, I like Mickey but that's one to avoid. Obviously if you've never seen The Maltese Falcon, that's one to check out.

I'm also a big fan of The Thin Man movies - a series of 6 films starring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles. The first is based on the novel The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett (who also wrote the novel The Maltese Falcon.) They're all entertaining, but the early few are the best. My favorite is the second, After The Thin Man, which co-stars a young James Stewart.

[Dominic]

can't go wrong with anything Ernst Lubitsch or Billy Wilder....check out Trouble in Paradise and Double Indemnity.

[12ozLongneck]

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I love old movies like this, Casablanca, To Have and Have Not, Notorious, etc. It sounds like you guys know your stuff--could you recommend some more to me?

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Off the top of my head:

The Third Man
Killer Bait (also known as Too Late For Tears)
The Roaring Twenties
The Killing
The Lady From Shanghi
Pickup On South Street
Ministry of Fear
The Big Knife

[12ozLongneck]

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Here's a fun exercise, try and figure out who killed chauffer Owen Taylor.

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Didn't Chandler say that he didn't know who killed him?

[imported_The Vibesman]

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Here's a fun exercise, try and figure out who killed chauffer Owen Taylor.

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Didn't Chandler say that he didn't know who killed him?

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Hawks said he called Chandler late at night and asked him who it was, and Chandler paused for a long time, finally said, "Damned if I know," and hung up. The book doesn't even make it clear that it was definitely murder, although the cops think it might have been. I used to think it was Joe Brody, but now I'm not sure.

That's a great list you've got up there. And Dominic brought up Double Indemnity, the screenplay for that was co-written by Chandler, it's another fantastic movie.

[Los Feliz Slim]

Fantastic recommendation. It's been raining and dark in LA today, which always makes me think of this movie.

[Blarg]

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This is a great bit, and actually wasn't in Hawks' original version of the movie. It's one of the scenes added at the studio's behest to add heat to the Bogart-Bacall pairing. And add heat it does.
Other than that bit, a good amount of the dialogue is directly from Chandler's novel, with a few subtle changes every once in a while. One of my favorites is in the beginning, when Carmen first meets Marlowe at the mansion. In the book she comments on how tall he is, but Bogart isn't tall, so in the movie it goes like this:

Carmen: "You're not very tall, are you?"
Philip: "Well, I try to be."

One of my favorite bits that is in the book, Marlowe to Vivian:
Vivian: "..and I don't like your manners!"
Marlowe: "I'm not wild about yours. I didn't ask to see you. I don't mind you not liking my manners, they're pretty bad. I grieve over them long winter evenings. I don't mind you showing me your legs. They're swell legs, and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind you ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me."

Well, the line about the legs isn't actually in the movie but the rest is. In the movie she's wearing pants, not a dressing gown.

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Ah, that business about the legs is a great one and adds a lot. Too bad that was dropped.

[Blarg]

Great thread. Nice to see folks with an appreciation for stuff that isn't just what came out in the last 10 minutes.

I'll chime in with three more obscure ones since lots of the more well known ones have been taken.

"Ossessione" is the first film version of The Postman Always Rings Twice, and is a nicely amoral rendering, much more vicious and sexual than you'd see in an American film of the time. It's a black and white Italian film classic and really knocked my socks off. It came out recently in DVD and is available at Amazon. It's by Visconti, a really good director. It puts the American versions of this story to shame.

Another is better known, Kiss Me Deadly. Its private eye doesn't operate by the classic Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler moral structure of a private code that lets a man drag himself through the worst filth of all the layers of the world and still come out with some sort of cleanliness at the end -- he's just a flat out jerk himself, without apology. It's a fun subversion of private eye schtick, and the star comes off as an uneasy mingling of likable and despicable. The weird camera angles, harshly contrasting lighting, and strange framing of film noir is often taken to an extreme. Bonus is the glowing suitcase full of deadly mystery that Quentin Tarantino did an homage to in Pulp Fiction.

Finally, The Long Goodbye is interesting fun. Elliot Gould takes it on the chin big for a friend, and it has one of my favorite endings in movies ever, low key but hilarious and something I have to admit I could identify with. Again, completely subverting the standard private eye business of keeping some sort of inviolable moral code in the center of all kinds of nastiness. I won't give it away.

[Vish]

OOT rarely disappoints me, and it certainly hasn't this time. Thanks fellas, I've made a list and I'll try and get hold of as many of these movies as possible when I get back to the States.

[Dominic]

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Great thread. Nice to see folks with an appreciation for stuff that isn't just what came out in the last 10 minutes.

I'll chime in with three more obscure ones since lots of the more well known ones have been taken.

"Ossessione" is the first film version of The Postman Always Rings Twice, and is a nicely amoral rendering, much more vicious and sexual than you'd see in an American film of the time. It's a black and white Italian film classic and really knocked my socks off. It came out recently in DVD and is available at Amazon. It's by Visconti, a really good director. It puts the American versions of this story to shame.

Another is better known, Kiss Me Deadly. Its private eye doesn't operate by the classic Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler moral structure of a private code that lets a man drag himself through the worst filth of all the layers of the world and still come out with some sort of cleanliness at the end -- he's just a flat out jerk himself, without apology. It's a fun subversion of private eye schtick, and the star comes off as an uneasy mingling of likable and despicable. The weird camera angles, harshly contrasting lighting, and strange framing of film noir is often taken to an extreme. Bonus is the glowing suitcase full of deadly mystery that Quentin Tarantino did an homage to in Pulp Fiction.

Finally, The Long Goodbye is interesting fun. Elliot Gould takes it on the chin big for a friend, and it has one of my favorite endings in movies ever, low key but hilarious and something I have to admit I could identify with. Again, completely subverting the standard private eye business of keeping some sort of inviolable moral code in the center of all kinds of nastiness. I won't give it away.

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Kiss Me Deadly is classic, hard-boiled noir. Love the apocalyptic ending that the studios DIDN'T want - in the original theatrical release, you see Mike Hammer escape to the beach after the mysterious "glowing briefcase" destroys the house....in the alternate ending, Aldrich does away with that, suggesting that the briefcase is literally Pandora's box - and will destroy the world.

Altman's "The Long Goodbye" was an attempt at turning Marlowe upside down - making him completely ineffective and apathatic. Casting the biggest counter-culture movie star in the world at that time - Elliot Gould (no, he wasn't always Monica and Ross's Dad on Friends) only solidified that attempt. It's a great film, with a great cast - Sterling Hayden, Jim Bouton (ofBall Four fame), Henry Gibson, director Mark Rydell as the bad guy, and an early appearance by the now-Govenor of California himself. Great fukin' flick.