Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.5

The Big Sleep Blu-ray Movie Review

Marlowe. Philip Marlowe.

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 26, 2016

The Big Sleep isn't just a detective film; it's the detective film. The characters are genre archetypes (cynical shamus, dodgy heiress, blackmailed rich man and assorted gamblers, chiselers and goons), and its dialogue crackles with the peculiar mix of wit, intrigue and sexual innuendo that defines "hard-boiled". The seedily corrupt atmosphere clings to everything, much like the fetid air of the hothouse where the hero-detective meets his new client. So thoroughly does The Big Sleep cast its spell that it's the rare film which gets away with having an incomprehensible plot. Event by event, the film is so engrossing that you end up not caring who did what to whom. The filmmakers themselves gave up trying to figure out the mystery. During production, director Howard Hawks and his trio of screenwriters famously realized that one of the story's murders had no killer and cabled novelist Raymond Chandler for assistance. As Chandler later said: "They sent me a wire . . . , and dammit I didn't know either."

Much of the film's magic derives from the re-teaming of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, whose marriage after Bacall's scorching debut in To Have and Have Not made the pair one of Hollywood's best-known couples. Warner Brothers rushed The Big Sleep into production to capitalize on the Bogart/Bacall chemistry, and the film was completed less than a year later, with scenes clearly intended to echo Bacall's debut (e.g., having her sing with a jazz band, as she did in To Have and Have Not). The trailer proudly announced: "That man Bogart—and that woman Bacall—are that way again!"

In an unexpected twist, however, The Big Sleep had to be delayed, because the studio wanted to get all of its war-themed releases into theaters before the imminent conclusion of World War II. While the film awaited its turn, Bacall's agent persuaded studio head Jack Warner to expand and enhance his client's role. When The Big Sleep finally reached theaters in August 1946, significant portions had been reshot. Not until the 1990s was a copy of the film's original cut, often known as "the Pre-release Version", discovered in the studio archives, allowing scholars to analyze the extensive changes.

The Warner Archive Collection has now added The Big Sleep to its roster of beautifully restored black-and-white classics. The film is presented on Blu-ray as it was released in 1946, with a copy of the Pre-release Version included in the extras in standard definition. A detailed comparison of the changes by film archivist Robert Gitt rounds out the extras.

The Big Sleep finds Bogart stepping into the shoes of Raymond Chandler's famous detective Philip Marlowe, previously played by Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet. Here Marlowe's client is the wealthy and ailing General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), who receives his guests in a humid orchid nursery where he watches them drink the brandy his doctor no longer permits him. Aside from a loyal butler named Norris (Charles D. Brown), the General shares his home with two wayward daughters, who bring him nothing but trouble. The elder, Vivian (Bacall), goes by her married name of Mrs. Rutledge, even though the marriage is over (or, in Marlowe's cynical phrase, "it didn't take"); Vivian's father describes her as "spoiled, exacting, smart and ruthless"—a description that would pique Marlowe's interest even if Mrs. Rutledge weren't already sniffing around her father's reason for hiring a P.I. The younger daughter, Carmen (Martha Vickers), combines the worst qualities of a drug addict and a nymphomaniac, greeting every man she meets with her signature catchphrase, "You're cute!" Marlowe's description sums her up dryly: "She tried to sit in my lap—while I was standing up." Carmen is the immediate cause of the General's current predicament; he is being dunned for her alleged gambling debts by a man named Geiger (Theodore von Eltz), who purports to be a rare book dealer but whose real business is blackmail.

Marlowe's efforts to clean up the General's domestic mess drop both the detective and the viewer into a cauldron of intrigue peopled by dubious characters, including yet another blackmailer, Joe Brody (Louis Jean Heydt), a gambler named Eddie Mars (John Ridgely) and an assortment of small-time hoods and enforcers. Aside from Carmen's gambling markers, the case includes incriminating photos, a coded journal of secret information and a dead chauffeur fished from the ocean in a car belonging to the Sternwood family. Meanwhile, a lot of people want to learn the whereabouts of a former Irish freedom fighter and bootlegger named Sean Regan, who used to work for General Sternwood but has now disappeared.

While Marlowe trades notes with his police buddy, Bernie Ohls (Regis Toomey)—another genre staple—he keeps his eye firmly on the elder Sternwood daughter, Vivian, whose intense interest in the investigation marks her as more than just a bystander. Alternately cajoling, insulting, seducing and exchanging wisecracks, Vivian is one of Bacall's most memorable characters, one who is ideally suited to the actress's purring delivery and sloe-eyed insinuations. Still, Vivian has plenty of competition for the P.I.'s attention, because women literally throw themselves at Marlowe. The bookstore clerk (Dorothy Malone) who helps him stake out Geiger, the taxi driver (Joy Barlow) to whom the detective gives the time-honored instruction to "follow that car", and even the cigarette girl (Shelby Payne) at Eddie Mars's gambling establishment all light up in the investigator's presence. Detective work may not be glamorous or lucrative, but Bogart gives Marlowe a confident animal magnetism that anticipates James Bond. Even Agnes (Sonia Darrin), the girlfriend/assistant of the despicable Geiger, ends up looking at Marlowe with longing in her eyes.

But just as the trailer promised, it's Bacall's Vivian who has to be the ultimate destination for Bogart's Marlowe, a result that seems predestined from the pair's first encounter, where they survey each other warily, feinting and dodging. The resourceful P.I. does ultimately fulfill his assignment, extricating the Sternwood family from the clutches of assorted villains, handing the cops a neatly packaged bundle and earning Vivian's undying gratitude. Having walked together on the wild side, the couple is finally ready to get serious, after the credits roll.

The Big Sleep Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Big Sleep was shot by cinematographer Sid Hickox, another veteran of To Have and Have Not. For the film's Blu-ray debut, Warner's Motion Picture Imaging has newly scanned (at 2k) a preservation fine-grain master positive made from the original nitrate negative. As with many of the classics in Warner's library, the negative had already sustained significant wear-and-tear when the preservation master was created, and as with Key Largo, the other Bogart/Bacall classic being released by WAC, MPI performed frame-by-frame restoration to bring the image as close as possible to its original quality.

The Big Sleep is a dark film, in both its subject matter and its appearance; much of it takes place at night and in dimly lit rooms. WAC's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray features appropriately deep blacks, which, on a properly calibrated display, have gradations that reveal fine detail. (Look, for example, at the weave of Bogart's suit in screen capture 7.) Many scenes were photographed through smoke, haze or rain, and the Blu-ray's image maintains an excellent balance between such atmospheric "interference" and the ability to see the events they are obscuring (e.g., screen captures 14 and 26). Fine detail is evident in well-lit sets like General Sternwood's greenhouse and the Acme Bookstore where Marlowe stakes out Geiger, but The Big Sleep is a classic film noir, where well-lit scenes are more the exception than the rule. The film's lighting style often accentuates the film's grain texture, but WAC and MPI have treated the grain respectfully and resolved it with clarity.

The disc's average bitrate of 29.94 Mbps is somewhat lower than WAC's usual but well within acceptable parameters, and the compression appears to have been fine-tuned to accommodate the trickiest scenes.

The Big Sleep Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Big Sleep's mono soundtrack has been encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, with identical left and right channels. Restoration has removed any clicks, pops or other sonic intrusions, and the track's fidelity and dynamic range are as good as the source will allow. The consistently sharp dialogue written by Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman and Nobel Prize-winning novelist William Faulkner (with uncredited rewrites by Julius Epstein) is clearly rendered, and the noirish score by the reliable Max Steiner (Casablanca) contributes an essential component to the film's tough atmosphere.

The Big Sleep Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The Blu-ray extras have been ported over from Warner's 2006 DVD of The Big Sleep, with two critical differences. The first is that the 1945 "Pre-release Version", which occupied side B of the DVD, is now included as an extra. The second is that the 1997 documentary exploring the differences between the Pre-release Version and the finished film, which was cut by half on the DVD, has been restored to its original running time.

• 1945 Alternate Version


• Introduction by Robert Gitt (480i; 1.33:1; 1:14): The film archivist describes the discovery of the Pre-release version.


• 1945 Alternate Version (480i; 1.33:1; 1:56:18): Though only two minutes longer, this version of The Big Sleep contains about twenty minutes of footage excised after the reshoots, including a lengthy scene in the office of Chief Inspector Ohls that helps illuminate the film's tangled plot.


• 1945/1946 Comparisons (480i; 1.33:1; 35:59): After recounting the communications between Bacall's agent and Jack Warner that led to reshoots, Gitt methodically catalogs the changes made to the film, reel by reel. This extra was cut to 16:35 on the 2006 DVD.



• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1.37:1; 1:50): When Humphrey Bogart goes to the local library looking for a mystery as unusual as The Maltese Falcon, a comely librarian offers him a book "that has everything the Falcon had . . . and more!"

The Big Sleep Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

While some collectors will be disappointed that WAC's Blu-ray does not contain a hi-def presentation of the Pre-release Version, it's a minor quibble with a Blu-ray that so capably reproduces the only version that was ever publicly released and that stood alone for fifty years before anyone learned about reshoots. Maybe The Big Sleep would have become a classic without any tinkering, but no true fan would want to lose such scenes as the famous banter between Bogart and Bacall about "who's in the saddle". That the earlier cut survived in any form is a small miracle, in an era decades before home video made the preservation of alternate versions and deleted scenes a common practice. Its inclusion in the extras, along with Robert Gitt's informative discussion, provides a rare look at a bygone era of studio filmmaking, but The Big Sleep was revered long before the reshoots became common knowledge—and justly so. Highly recommended.