Financial Times (London,England)
August 3, 1995, Thursday
THE BIG SLEEP (PG) Howard Hawks
The re-issue of a handsome new print of Howard Hawks’ grandfather of all noirs, The Big Sleep, is a welcome spell of grown-up cinema in a generally juvenile summer of films. After decades of consignment to the television screen, it greatly benefits from a more expansive projection. What is perhaps most striking about the film a half century after its release is how incredibly sexy it is – I’ll take Bogey and Bacall using talk about race horses as a code for bedroom technique over Stallone’s pectorals or Stone’s scissored legs any day. And Bogart’s book-shop pick-up of Dorothy Malone remains a masterpiece of seductive misdirection.
Equally rewarding are those early scenes in which Charles Waldron’s deeply decadent Colonel Sternwood indulges in Marlowe’s vices by proxy, waxing lyrical about the orchid’s ‘rotten sweetness of corruption’ in some of the few lines by William Faulkner that producer Jack Warner did not consign to the dust bin. And don’t worry if you cannot always follow matters too closely – neither Hawks nor author Raymond Chandler could ever satisfactorily account for what is going on. Just sit back and enjoy.
