Kinematoscope

It's easy to think of classic films as unimpeachable works of art- chiseled from stone, woven in tapestry. The vision, perhaps, of a black and white auteur, or the product of the finely-tuned studio system of yore. But the greatest films often have the most slipshod, haphazard tales of development: take 1946's The Big Sleep, for example.

After the best-picture triumph of Casablanca, it probably seemed like a no-brainer to cast Humphrey Bogart as another ambivalent wiseguy trying to live under Vichy rules with a piano-playing sidekick. So Howard Hawks enlisted a broke William Faulkner to transpose Hemingway's To Have and Have Not to WWII France. Despite the extensive pedigrees of those four men, the show was stolen by a nineteen-year-old Harper's Bazaar cover model named Lauren Bacall- her rapport with the middle-aged Bogart resulted in her part enlarging considerably.

And so it would be for Hawks/Bogart/Bacall volume two: give the people what they want. It turns out they want star power, sexual chemistry, long horse-racing double entendres, and classic noir.

The Key Players

Howard Hawks comes back to the countdown after two screwball comedies, Bogart we saw once, later in his all-too-brief careeer.

It was actually Hawks' wife Nancy that spotted Betty Joan Peske, soon to be rechristened Lauren Bacall, on a magazine and urged Howard to give her a screen test. The legend has it that both Hawks and Bogart (also married) fell in love with the young starlet during filming of To Have and Have Not, with bitterness resulting when she chose Bogart. Nevertheless, after imitating life in art with four successful thrillers together (Dark Passage and Key Largo being the other two), Bacall would also prove adept at comedy (How To Marry A Millionaire, Designing Woman) drama (Written on the Wind), and stage-work, winning two Tonys before an obligatory "It's Lauren Bacall!" Oscar nomination in 1996 (The Mirror Has Two Faces) and honorary statuette in 2009.

Martha Vickers takes the only other substantial role, in her biggest career success- though that might not be the case if she hadn't died in early middle age from esophogeal cancer, just like Bogart. Elisha Cook from The Killing also pops up- I think he was mostly cast to make the 5'8" Bogart look taller.



More...

The Story:

Raymond Chandler's classic gumshoe novel is rightly famous, not just for having a whole lot of twists and turns, but just the right amount of them: not so many as to be ludicrous, not so few as to be easy to guess the end.

We start with Bogart, aka most famous shamus ever Phillip Marlowe, arriving at the house of his latest client, Old Rich Father (General Sternwood). First he meets Carmen Sternwood (Vickers), whom we'll refer to as Crazed Sexpot Daughter. This is established in a wonderful scene featuring a metajoke about Bogart's height and possibly the shortest shorts available in 1946- also she tries to sit in his lap while he's standing.

Anyway, Crazed Sexpot Daughter has some gambling debts with a Fake Book Dealer, and Old Rich Father wants Marlowe to get her off the hook. Simple enough.

But wait- Vivian Rutledge (Bacall), the other daughter (and presumably a widow? This is never explained) thinks Marlowe's really been called in to look into the dissapearance of her father's Ex-Right Hand Man, who ran off with the wife of a Scary Casino Owner some months before.

Got all that? Marlowe does some simple recon, following the Fake Book Dealer from his Fake Bookshop to his house, only to hear a gunshot and a scream. He storms in to find a drug-addled Crazed Sexpot Daughter, a dead Fake Book Dealer, and a hidden camera with missing film.

Marlowe takes the girl home, but soon Vivian is blackmailed with the compromising picture of Crazed Sexpot Daughter from the camera (the contents of the photo are never explained), and goes to our man for help. But is Vivian in cahoots with the Scary Casino Owner, who was coincidentally the Fake Book Dealer's landlord, and incidentally doesn't seem to care at all about his wife running off with the Ex-Right-Hand-Man?

I'm pretty sure the suspense is gripping!

The Artistry

It's not proper film-nerd behavior to watch The Big Lebowski two dozen times before ever seeing actual noir staples like The Big Sleep, but that's what I ended up doing. I actually even saw The Maltese Falcon last month in the theater!

I even saw the random Smallville episode where Jimmy Olsen gets knocked out and has an elaborate noir fantasy after watching The Big Sleep before I saw The Big Sleep! But better late than never.

And even with too many shady thugs, offscreen murders and double crosses to really keep track of the first time through, there's a familiar rhythm and atmosphere that makes it a pleasure to watch. Marlowe falls in love with Vivian Rutledge because he always does, because she's a woman with a troubled past who needs his help. He gets roughed up by some thugs because he's ignored multiple warnings to stop looking, even after his client says to stop (technically his actual case ends when the Fake Book Dealer is shot).

My favorite character is not Marlowe, however, it's a character never seen onscreen named Owen Taylor. The Sternwood family driver, he is at one point in possession of the scandalous photo- a dumb thug named Joe Brody admits later that he knocked Taylor out and took them, to blackmail Vivian with.

But Owen Taylor still ends up dead, his car twelve feet under the ocean. But who killed him? Brody had no reason to (and no reason to hide it, if he had). The legend is that when Hawks and co. found this plothole, production halted for two days while the screenwriters combed over the book to figure it out. When they couldn't, they telegrammed Chandler himself... who admitted that he didn't know, either.

How awesome is that? Owen Taylor, killed by the plot itself! The very mood of The Big Sleep killed him, because it needed a second body to raise the stakes, and there he was: alone, unconcious, on the side of the road. Absorbed by the shadowy fog and washed out to sea. Owen Taylor is my new go-to reference for plot holes in great films- films great enough that the plot holes hardly matter.

It makes The Big Sleep even better, because there's no way a plot that messy could tie up entirely neatly, is there?

Anyway, the cast is of course excellent, even if the Bogie/Bacall phenomenon threatens to hijack the entire film (more on this later). Vickers shines in her few scenes (according to Chandler, her role was diminished because she was acting circles around Bacall), and all the character-actors as minor stooges acquit themselves just as well. Elisha Cook plays a doomed go-between with such frank earnestness that even Marlowe takes a shine to the guy.

The score I found a pretty typical "OH NO! SOMETHING BAD OR DRAMATIC IS HAPPENING" big band warble, and the noir shadows were familiarly non-descript. The crackling dialogue was filled with some wonderful lines- all my favorites I'll throw in Leftover Thoughts.

The only knock against The Big Sleep is really against the goddamned Hayes Code, anyway- racy and lewd things are left in the film but just obliquely hinted at, like the photo, or a key homosexual relationship. And the ending is softened a bit, as we'll see.

So studio pressure, a mystery killing, and the Hayes Code all mucked The Big Sleep about, and the result was still great. Just goes to show.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS THAT ARE PROBABLY IMPOSSIBLE TO KEEP TRACK OF ANYWAY!

Let me preface this by saying this is uneccesarily long and largely so I can keep it all straight for myself:

So...Marlowe tracks down the blackmailers and, despite interference from both sisters, reclaims the photo from Joe Brody, who got it from Owen Taylor (who killed the Fake Book Dealer and took the film because he's in love with Crazed Sexpot Daughter, or was) and a woman named Agnes, who was the Fake Book Dealer's assistant.

Then some random dude (that the film never bothers to mention was the dead guy's gay lover) mistakenly kills Brody in revenge.

Vivian, assuming the case is now over since her sister's debts are gone, and the murder of the Fake Book Dealer is solved (WHAT ABOUT YOUR DRIVER, OWEN TAYLOR, HUH!?), flirts with Marlowe until she realizes that he's not done with the case.

Even though she and the Scary Casino owner stage an elaborate show to throw him off the trail, Marlowe doggedly follows the right people at the right moments until Agnes tips him off to the location of the Casino Owner's wife (after a poor stooge in love with her gets killed delivering the message, which means Marlowe is really Not Letting It Go).

He goes to a secluded cabin to find said Wife, but also Vivian and some henchman that knocks him over the head and ties him up. But Vivian sets him free, long enough to shoot the henchman and drive her back to the house that the Scary Casino Owner owns.

And here's the finale, ready? Marlowe calls the Casino Owner, tells he'll meet him at the house in 40 minutes (even though he's already there- ha! landlines.). Casino Owner arrives, leaves his henchman outside, so Marlowe gets the drop on him.

And here's the rub: turns out Scary Casino Owner convinced Vivian that her sister killed the missing Right Hand Man, and has been blackmailing her ever since. In the book this is ACTUALLY WHAT HAPPENED, but in the film Marlowe sees that he has no proof, and is just taking advantage of Crazed Sexpot Daughter's frequent blackouts to be a jerk. In both versions, he just fires his gun into the ceiling and scares the Casino Owner out of the door, where he's shot by his own men (who heard the shots and figured out Marlowe was in there, and naturally got jumpy).

He calls the cops to get them out safely, and Bogie and Bacall manage to own this cheesy ending exchange:

Vivian: "You've forgotten one thing - me."
Marlowe: "What's wrong with you?"
Vivian: "Nothing you can't fix."

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Higher, for sure. It's definitely my favorite in the genre so far (take that, Out Of The Past). They actually made another version of The Big Sleep with Robert Mitchum as Marlowe, but it was in 1978 and he was sixty! Come on, now.

The Legacy:

As popular as it was, no awards or nominations. It is in the NFR, and I did see a "Who was the best Phillip Marlowe?" poll somewhere where Bogart was absoluely crushing everyone else (Elliott Gould? Be serious.).

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

The Big Sleep was actually finished and shown to servicemen before the studio decided the sexual tension between the two leads needed to be amped up. So they shot the night club scene where they talk for a super long time about horse racing and made countless double entendres (many of which I only got the naughty-side of, knowing squat about horses). Embedding is sadly disabled, so follow this link. The clip is from a colorized version, so brace yourself for that.

BONUS: My favorite part was when they prank call the police!

Leftover Thoughts:

-FYI, by "Fake Book Dealer" I mean a lowlife pornographer that masqerades as a book dealer, not a dealer of false books (or "fake books" like jazz musicians use).

-I kind of want to write my own version of Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead," called Who Killed Owen Taylor? Too bad he never actually appears in The Big Sleep.

-Theorists argue that either Brody killed Owen Taylor and didn't admit it for no real reason, or that Taylor, waking up alone, now a murderer, and without the damning photo of his beloved Carmen, then killed himself- but I don't buy it.

-And now, all quotes all the time:

Carmen: "You're not very tall, are you?"
Marlowe: "Well, I try to be."

after Vivian has trouble opening his office door to get out
Marlowe: "Well it wasn't intentional."
Vivian: "Try it sometime."

Mars: "That any of your business?"
Marlowe: "I could make it my business."
Mars: "I could make your business mine."
Marlowe: "Oh, you wouldn't like it, the pay's too small."

Vivian: "The only trouble is we could've had a lot of fun if you weren't a detective."

Marlowe: "You came in by the keyhole like Peter Pan."
Carmen: "Who's he?"
Marlowe: "Guy I used to know ran a pool room."

Carmen: "Is he as cute as you are?"
Marlowe: "Nobody is." (it's impossible to describe the perfect deadpan with which Bogart delivers this reply. It destroyed me.).



Coming Up...

156. Ben-Hur

155. The Manchurian Candidate

154. Avatar

Number 201, ladies and gentlefolk, marks the fiftieth entry in the countdown! Drinks all around!

In fact, let's celebrate with some rust-flavored tea from the boiler of a steamship (since some dowdy preacher's sister poured all the gin overboard), as the last entry of the first fifth of the countdown is 1951's The African Queen.

The Key Players:

The higher we go, the more legendary the talent will become: not only do we visit with Katherine Hepburn for the third time, but we encounter the legendary Humphrey Bogart as well. After a stint playing gangsters in B-Movies, he rose to stardom in High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon- then some chick walked into his gin joint in another film we'll get to a long time from now, and an icon was cemented.

Much like Titanic was made solely so James Cameron could go deep-sea exploring, The African Queen was made largely so director John Huston could shoot an elephant. He insisted it be shot on location, which would be the sweltering, wild, and malaria funhouses of the Congo and Uganda, and kept changing the locations last minute to be closer to ideal big-game hunting spots. Co-screenwriter Peter Viertel got so fed up he later wrote a thinly fictionalized account of the shooting entitled White Hunter, Black Heart, painting Huston as an addled, elephant-crazed Kurtz holding the entire pre-production crew at his mercy.

Despite all this, The African Queen is the most beloved film of Huston's illustrious career- basically six and a half decades of classics, from The Maltese Falcon in 1941 to Prizzi's Honor in 1985.

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The Story:

The plot mirrors that of C. S. Forester's novel pretty closely. Hepburn plays the sister of a British missionary in Central Africa- at the outset of World War I, the German military conscripts all the local natives. Her brother dies after the Germans burn the village (and he goes into shock, seemingly), so she's forced to flee with Bogart, the coarse Canadian captain of the titular African Queen, a steam-powered mining vessel.

When Bogart explains that not only do they have nowhere to go, but rescue from the British is blocked by the German warship Louisa in a lake far downriver, Hepburn suggests that they fashion makeshift torpedoes out of gas tanks and TNT, strap them on the African Queen's bow, and ram it into the German ship.

Naturally, the every-man-for-him-selfish Bogart objects, but is bullied into it by Hepburn polite Nationalism. So they set off downstream. Along the way: rapids, gunfire, larger rapids, a broken propeller shaft, a muddy river delta, (possibly real) leeches, and an awkward romance!

The Artistry:

As novel as the location shooting was at the time, the real heart of The African Queen is the chemistry between Bogart and Hepburn. I expected a sort of screwball, opposites attract sort of thing- and while there was an element of that, it's mostly Hepburn bullying Bogart into being a hero. My favorite moment is probably when he expects her to be discouraged after the first set of rapids, but she's instead envigorated by the sensation.

The steps after that- he drinks in despair and is rude, she pours out the gin and waits for him to get his nerve back up, he shaves his face and they fall in love- are all staples for a reason, and no one hits them better. I haven't read the novel, but it's played with a welcome humor that any modern day film set in WWI wouldn't even attempt- Bogart mugging and imitating hippos is a little corny, but it's still warm and well-meant.

Not that I can judge it in context, but the technicolor brought Africa reasonably to life, and the only odd moments are the clearly super-imposed backgrounds when they go over rapids. Otherwise the expensive trip to Africa paid off.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

The biggest departure from the novel is the ending. In both versions our heroic couple argues about who should man the boat for the run at the Louisa before accepting that neither can leave the other behind. They pull out in a storm, but the holes cut for the torpedoes let in water, and the African Queen capsizes before reaching its target.

The next morning we see Bogart has been captured by the Germans- at their questions, he tells them he was fishing on the lake, but they sentence him to hang anyway. Hepburn is soon brought aboard, and proudly tells the enemy that they were thisclose to bringing down their warship- she's sentenced to hang as well.

Bogart asks the German captain to marry them, to Hepburn's delight and the captain's bemused frustration ("I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution!").

Of course, just in the nick of time, the Louisa runs right into the bow of the derelict African Queen, allowing our heroes to escape into the water as it sinks. The newlyweds merrily swim off to safety on the Belgian-held side of the Lake.

The novel ends with the same failed attempt- only the German captain decides to deliver them to a British nval vessel. They decide to get married when they get back to the consul, and it ends with "Whether or not they lived happily ever after would be difficult to say." Would it, really, omniscient narrotor of a fictional book?

So yeah, the ending is pretty standard Hollywood, and there's an over-reliance on deus ex machina in general: the end, the rainwater that gets them unstuck from the delta, and the sun in the eyes of a German sniper. But the smile that broke out on my face when I saw the upturned African Queen in the water probably means I didn't really care.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

I'm going with higher, which is of course pending the rest of the list- there are two other famous Huston/Bogart collaborations to get through, after all.

The Legacy:

Oscars: Bogart won his only acting award out of three nominations for his workmanlike perfomance as Charlie Allnut. Hepburn would score a nomination for actress, and Huston for director as well as screenwriter (with James Agee).

Elsewhere- AFI lists left and right, NFR inclusion, and so on. It was adapted into a radio play (with Bogart reprising) in 1952, and Clint Eastwood even played the John Huston character in a film version of White Hunter, Black Heart.

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Pretty much the only non-10m-long clip is the victorious moment in which they first kiss- as stiff as Hepburn's "hip hip hooray!" is, there's some great acting when they realize what they're doing.



It was another surprise that this moment would be so early in the film- I thought they would deny their feelings until much closer to the finale, you know, like you do in these types of films.

Leftover Thoughts:

-I wish that British trailer voice dude up there would narrate all trailers: "And filmed amid the jungles of the headquarters of Africa, the Dark Continent..."

-I'm getting conflicting information on whether or not there were real leeches all over Bogart in one scene. But they sure looked real- if so, there's the Oscar for you.

-This will be getting a region 1 DVD (and Blu-Ray) release for the first time coming up on March 23rd, 2010.

Coming Up...

200. Brief Encounter

199. Stalag 17

198. Kill Bill Vol. 2