The Big Sleep (1946)

 Second viewing, and first one with original audio; previously viewed on or a few days after March 29, 1986.

A private detective is hired to handle a case of blackmail targetting an upper class household; the case leads to another, concerning the disappearance of an employee of said household.

While this film is not exactly unwatchable, it has such serious problems that it is impossible to consider it a good one. People say that plot doesn't matter, but that is not entirely true. In the case of this film it clearly matters to some degree, and the heavy limitations imposed by the Hays code, and possibly even by commercial considerations, have made the plot incomprehensible at its most basic elements, unless one has read the novel and fills the missing points by oneself. The pornography angle has been entirely omitted, and Carmen is fully dressed at the time of Geiger's murder. One is left wondering what Geiger's blackmail was based on. The homosexuality angle is also left out, which makes the motivation for the killing of Brody unaccounted for. One flaw which probably has nothing to do with the moral code is the ending, which is very implausible in the movie. In the novel Marlowe has empirical evidence which points him to the murderer; in the movie he simply jumps to the conclusion. Even if one disregards those problems, the film doesn't really have anything remarkable, except for the sequence of the first meeting of Marlowe and Carmen Sternwood, which is really good, and is actually better than in the novel. Though competently made at a technical level, most of the film consists of people talking, or pointing guns to one another, or some other routine element of criminal narratives (and melodramas, which this is also, to some degree). Most of the enjoyment is derived from the novel's virtues which survived the adaptation process.

Rating: 48 (down from 58)