Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3675 in DVD
• Released on: 2009-05-19
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 114 minutes

From Amazon.co.uk
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made screen history together more than once, but they were never more popular than in this 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel, directed by Howard Hawks (To Have and Have Not). Bogart plays private eye Philip Marlowe, who is hired by a wealthy socialite (Bacall) to look into troubles stirred up by her wild, young sister (Martha Vickers). Legendarily complicated (so much so that even Chandler had trouble following the plot), the film is nonetheless hugely entertaining and atmospheric, an electrifying plunge into the exotica of detective fiction. William Faulkner wrote the screenplay. --Tom Keogh

Additional features
This 1945 prerelease version contains 18 minutes that were either reshot or deleted from the 1946 theatrical release.

Amazon.com essential video
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made screen history together more than once, but they were never more popular than in this 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel, directed by Howard Hawks (To Have and Have Not). Bogart plays private eye Philip Marlowe, who is hired by a wealthy socialite (Bacall) to look into troubles stirred up by her wild, young sister (Martha Vickers). Legendarily complicated (so much so that even Chandler had trouble following the plot), the film is nonetheless hugely entertaining and atmospheric, an electrifying plunge into the exotica of detective fiction. William Faulkner wrote the screenplay. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

The Big Sleep, or "how many cool one-liners can you pack into a single movie."
This movie should be stated in the Oxford English Dictionary next to the word "awesome." The plot is amazingly built, the atmosphere is cool to a point where you wonder if anything cooler has ever existed, and then when you see Bogart and Bacall, you realize that, in fact, those two actors are the personification of the word cool. I've seen quite a few films noirs and The Big Sleep is definitely right up there among my favorites. Bogart is an icon of the genre and he definitely puts in a good argument in his own favor in this movie. The dialogues are quirky and lightning fast, lining up the cool one-liners like there's no tomorow. And the camera is gorgeous, the very essence of what a film noir should look like: a mix of classy and nitty-gritty.

The Big Sleep is a great movie from a more civilized age - a must-see for anyone calling himself a cinema buff.

Wake up
Humphrey Bogart's most famous roles are as Sam Spade and Rick Blaine, a pair of callous wise-guys. But he played a softer-hearted tough guy in "The Big Sleep," adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel by the legendary Howard Hawks -- a fast, witty, tough-fisted thriller, with excellent acting and sizzling chemistry.

Private "shamus" Philip Marlowe (Bogart) is hired by the decrepit General Sternwood to hunt down a man who's blackmailing his creepy, childlike daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers). It seems like a straightforward case -- but when he manages to track down the blackmailer, he finds him shot dead in a porn studio -- and a drugged Carmen sitting nearby.

Marlowe drags her home, and orders her fiery sister Vivian (Lauren Bacall) to say nothing of where she's been. Now the investigation is more serious, and Marlowe finds himself walking a tightrope of blackmail, pornography, gambling, mobs and other charming illegalities -- and at the heart of it is the location of one of Sternwood's employees.

"The Big Sleep" was a confusing book -- even Raymond Chandler couldn't follow all the threads, and wasn't able to pin one of the murders on anyone. So it's not surprising that the movie adaptation is similarly befuddling, even with some plot elements smoothed out to simplify the story. It still takes three or four viewings to even start figuring it out.

But it is really enjoyable. Hawks captures the taut, slightly humorous tone of Chandler's writing. That's especially hard, considering everybody except Marlowe and the General are double or triple-crossing somebody else, and the plotlines are murky enough that even at the end, you can't tell what's going on.

But Hawks fills it with classic lines ("What's wrong with you?" "Nothing you can't fix.") and tight action scenes, such as when Bogart sends a man out the door to be shot by his own men. There are moments of humor too, such as when Vivian and Marlowe play a prank call to a policeman ("I can do what? Where? Oh, I wouldn't like that, and neither would my daughter!").

Marlowe's a more likable character than Rick or Spade -- he may be rough and wise-cracking, but he also has soft spots and a likable sense of humor ("I don't like [my manners] myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings"). And he has sparking chemistry with real-life wife Bacall, who plays a hardened rich girl who is desperate to protect her dad and sister, even to the point of framing herself.

"The Big Sleep" is a classic for good reasons -- it may be murky to the point of imcomprehensibility, but it's also wickedly funny, taut and tightly directed. Definitely a must-see.

Murder, mystery and the magnetism of Bogart and Bacall.
They were one of Hollywood's all-time legendary couples, both on screen and off; producing celluloid magic in the four films they made together between 1943 and 1948 as much as by their off-screen romance, which in itself was the stuff that dreams are made of. He was the American Film Insititute's No. 1 star of the 20th century, Hollywood's original noir anti-hero, who in addition to the AFI honors bestowed on his real-life persona also played two of the 20th century's Top 50 film heroes ("Casablanca"'Rick Blaine and this movie's Philip Marlow); epitome of the handsome, cynical and oh-so lonesome wolf, looking unbeatably cool in dinner jacket, trenchcoat and fedora alike, a glass of whiskey in his hand and cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth; and endowed with a legendary aura several times larger than his physical stature. She, despite a 25-year age difference his equal in everything from grit and toughness to mysterious appeal; chillier than bourbon on the rocks, possessing more than just a touch of class whatever her role; and long since a bona fide AFI movie legend in her own right.

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall met on the set of Howard Hawks's 1944 realization of Ernest Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not," where an obvious chemistry quickly developed between 45-year-old veteran Bogart, who had just scored two of film history's greatest-ever hits with "The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca" in the two preceding years, and the sassy, exciting 20-year-old newcomer who possessed the maturity and sex-appeal of a woman good and well 10 years her senior. They were reunited two years later for this adaptation of Raymond Chandler's first Philip Marlowe novel "The Big Sleep" (1939), based on a screenplay written, like that of "To Have and Have Not," by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman, together with Leigh Brackett (who had not participated in scripting the Hemingway adaptation). By the time the movie was released in 1946, Bogart and Bacall were married.

Reprising Bogart's noir gumshoe role with a character not unlike Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade in "The Maltese Falcon," the movie "The Big Sleep" is as infamous as Chandler's literary original for its labyrinthine plot, which reportedly even the author himself couldn't completely untangle (nor did he care to). The plot is essentially faithful to Chandler's novel, from which it takes much of its dialogue; albeit streamlined and with some changes made to fit Bogart's physical characteristics, and eliminating or softening a few scenes considered unfit for display to a moviegoing audience in the 1940s. The story begins when Marlowe is hired by wealthy old General Sternwood to handle a blackmailing attempt involving gambling debts incurred by Sternwood's younger daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers) (whom the detective has already met when she literally threw herself into his arms upon his entry into the house, sucking her thumb and coyly telling him "you're cute"). After his interview with the dying general in the latter's hot and humid orchid house, a disheveled Marlowe is summoned to the rooms of the general's older daughter Vivian (Lauren Bacall), who tries to worm out of him the purpose of his engagement and who, as Marlowe quickly concludes, has more than a minor hidden agenda of her own. Soon the detective is up to his ears in the classical film noir brew of murder, damsels in distress, shady characters and a world where nothing is what it appears to be, and where he'll be able to consider himself lucky if he gets out alive -- yet, he is determined to see the case through and will neither be bought off by money nor by sweetness and seduction.

Looking back at the movie and its stars' almost mythical fame, it is difficult to imagine that, produced at the height of the studio system era, it was originally just one of the roughly 50 movies released by Warner Brothers over the course of one year. But mass production didn't equal low quality; on the contrary, the great care given to all production values, from script-writing to camera work, editing, score (Max Steiner) and the stars' presentation in the movie itself and in its trailer was at least partly responsible for its lasting success. Indeed, the release of "The Big Sleep" was delayed for an entire year - and not only because its first version was completed around the end of WWII and Warner Brothers wanted to get their still-unreleased war movies into theaters first, but also, and significantly, because Lauren Bacall's agent convinced studio boss Jack Warner and director Howard Hawks to reshoot several scenes to better highlight the sassy, mysterious new star Bacall had become after "To Have and Have Not." And it certainly paid off: "The Big Sleep" firmly established then-22-year-old Lauren Bacall as one of Hollywood's new leading ladies, and even more than her first film with Humphrey Bogart laid the foundation for the couple's mythical relationship.

Bogart and Bacall would star together two more times after "The Big Sleep": In "Dark Passage" (1947) and "Key Largo" (1948). But of their four collaborations, the first two -- and in particular, "The Big Sleep" -- remain unparalleled for their secretive, shadowy aura, tight scripting, snappy dialogue, cynicism and underlying seductiveness; due in equal parts to the story crafted by Raymond Chandler, its adaptation by Faulkner, Furthman and Brackett, Howard Hawks's masterful direction and its starring couple's irresistible chemistry. After three failed marriages, after having produced on-screen magic with Mary Astor in "The Maltese Falcon" and, even more so, with Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca" (and although he would go on to star in such memorable pairings as next to Katherine Hepburn in "The African Queen" and Audrey Hepburn in "Sabrina"), Humphrey Bogart had finally met his match -- and while his and Bacall's marriage was painfully cut short by the cancer to which he succumbed in 1957, the magnetism they created on screen will live on, and nowhere more brilliantly than in "The Big Sleep."