8.1 | / 10 |
Users | 4.6 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Private eye Philip Marlowe investigates a society girl's involvement in the murder of a pornographer.
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers, Dorothy MaloneFilm-Noir | 100% |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Crime | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (192 kbps)
German: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (192 kbps)
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (192 kbps)
Polish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
BDInfo verified (German & Polish are also 192 kbps)
English SDH, French, German SDH, Japanese, Spanish, Polish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 5.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
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 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'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 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.
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.
Fox Studio Classics
1944
1942
Warner Archive Collection
1947
Warner Archive Collection
1944
Warner Archive Collection
1953
1941
1942
1954
1944
1945
1947
Arrow Academy
1946
Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1950
1946
Hot Spot
1941
Warner Archive Collection
1975
4K Restoration
1948
1945
1946
Warner Archive Collection
1947