It meets two of the three criteria for inclusion in that series:
1) It was released before I was born;
2) I have seen it only once.
It's the crucial third criterion where The Big Sleep comes up way short:
3) I had really liked the movie.
So why was I watching a noir I hadn't liked very much, starring an actor whom I shun as often as I embrace, on Wednesday night?
Well that was also the day I finished reading Raymond Chandler's book.
I had selected it off the shelf in our house, which is how I get about half the books I read. My wife has a huge collection of books I've never read, so there's always something to read among possessions we already have under our own roof.
Chandler's book presented me a unique opportunity. If I read this book, maybe I could make sense of why Hawks' movie was such a big miss for me when I saw it back in 2013 -- hey, exactly ten years ago this month, now that we're in December. Then of course I would watch the movie again, always with the blog post I'm currently writing in the back of my mind as additional motivation for the whole thing.
Grappling with my dislike of The Big Sleep has actually been a big motivator for me in the decade since I saw it. It was one of the driving factors for why I did a series on film noir in 2021 -- a series that brought me my favorite Humphrey Bogart movie of all time, Key Largo.
When I started reading the book, it felt like I was off to the races. I immediately took to Chandler's writing and his clipped yet evocative way of describing things, like he was Philip Marlowe himself, but also a gifted writer. (The book is written in first person singular, so the confluence of the writer and his character is not such a surprise.)
About 70 or 80 pages into a 217-page book, my progress stalled for a good three weeks. I was starting to succumb to the same character confusion that had plagued me during the entirety of my viewing of the movie ten years ago. I'd read only a page or two here and there, and was almost tempted to stop reading the book, except I never do that. Maybe noir really just isn't my thing.
Then a week or two ago, I picked up the pace again and finished on a high note, getting back on track with the story and continuing to love Chandler's way of saying things. The story details became clearer and I could keep everyone straight, and I loved the way the book ended.
Loved it so much that I rented the movie again that very night.
Maybe starting it after 10 p.m. wasn't such a good idea, but I figured, I'd already seen it once, and the characters were fresh in my memory from the page. Fatigue would not be the same factor as if I were sitting through it the first time, with the same lack of bearings I had ten years ago.
I don't think the time of night was really the issue, but I didn't like the movie much better.
Here are the reasons why:
1) The impression of the film's excessive talkiness was still with me. In trying to streamline what is also considered to be a confusing book, the trio of screenwriters (who include William Faulkner) had removed some of the intervening scenes, scenes where Marlowe is alone with his thoughts and with a drink. Because much of his ruminating does, indeed, never escape his thoughts, in the movie he's left having to convey the same discoveries about the case via dialogue with another character. And since there is a lot of information to convey, there are a lot of characters he has to burden with a lot of exposition about the story, with few down scenes to breathe in between.
The next several will be changes from the book that were probably necessary to make a bleak novel more palatable to a wider movie audience. In other words, changes dictated by Hollywood. Some SPOILERS to follow.
2) The character who is never seen but who drives much of the action is named Tom Regan in the novel, Sean Regan in the film. That alone is not noteworthy, but in the novel he is the husband of the femme fatale, Vivian Regan, whereas in the film he is just unconnected from the action except in terms of being a favorite associate of Vivian's father, General Sternwood. The more intimate connection of him being the general's son-in-law and his daughter's wayward husband works much better, especially since this character is otherwise a puzzling source of obsession threading through the whole story, even the parts that seem to have nothing to do with him. I suspect this was because they wanted to make Vivian a more traditional love interest for Marlowe and the morality of that was sketchy when she's already married, albeit it to someone who has theoretically run off with another woman. (We find out that's not what happened to Tom/Sean, but for most of the story we entertain that possibility.) She does have a failed marriage in her history but she is Vivian Rutledge, not Vivian Regan. She's played by Lauren Bacall.
3) The need to give our femme fatale a lot more screen time than she gets in the book. Vivian is certainly a central character in the novel, the (slightly) more sensible of the two Sternwood daughters, but she doesn't need to pop up in every scene. I counted at least two crucial scenes in the movie where she was present, where she wasn't in the novel, and her presence doesn't really make sense in either of them. Again this has to do with making her a more traditional love interest in the movie. I believe she and Marlowe do kiss in the book, but he views it as sort of a cheeky compensation for all the head games the Sternwoods are playing with him, not love or anything approaching it. I prefer my Marlowe in the novel's more detached mode.
4) The ending is entirely different. The big bad has to get it in the end of the movie, where he doesn't in a novel, which can have a harsher ending and leave only hollow victories for the protagonist. As such, the Eddie Mars character (played by John Ridgely) is promoted to that role of big bad, whereas he overshadows the proceedings more than anything in the book, and is still decidedly on his feet and ready to get richer at the end. That is more of a noir ending and I vastly prefer it.
5) However, if the goal were to try to make the movie tighter and cleaner, to make sure all the characters get paid off properly, that goal is also fumbled. The novel notably revisits characters we met at the beginning, such as General Sternwood, while the movie doesn't bother with it. Neither is the younger sister, Carmen Sternwood, checked in on after about the movie's halfway point. She's a key player in the final pages of the novel but is basically just discarded in the screen version.
The big complaint I had about this movie when I saw it -- and the complaint I understand even its fans are willing to level against it -- is that the plot doesn't make any sense. I don't have that problem anymore after reading the book. I find it all connects together well enough, but I also find that the plot does not adapt well to a movie template because it's a bit more sprawling, sort of with two distinct halves that have only a thin relationship to each other. The way they tried to finesse the screenplay to give it more sense actually makes the problem worse, though it's hard for me to see that as easily now because I did just read the book and I do freshly recognize most of the scenes.
Which I guess means I just need to trust the 2013 version of myself and the experience he had.
I think I do like the movie more now -- more than a ranking of 3,973 out of 6,423 on Flickchart, in any case. But while I thought there was a chance I'd need to re-rank it straight away to upgrade my appreciation of it, and to make more accurate the results of duels between whatever film I'm ranking and the movie that is ranked at that spot on my chart, I now think I'll let it occur organically as it is not likely to jump more than a couple hundred spots.
