I think I’ve watched The Big Sleep (1946) probably forty times in the last thirty years. I can’t get enough of it. Everytime I view it, I see something new, some new code word or phrase for something considered unspeakable back in the day.
Example: The flirtacious Horse Conversation between Bogart and Bacall is hilariously obscene. It had to be written this way in order to get past the on-set censors. LOL. It got through because the censors didn’t get it at all. People were so charmingly naive in those days.
When they heard that Howard Hawks was going to make a film based on a Raymond Chandler detective novel, considered one step above pornography, the censors insisted on being on set during filming, nearly driving screenwriter and famous novelist William Faulkner and the cast out of their minds with daily rewrites. Chandler even showed up to help Faulkner with it to protect his story from being totally ruined and unrecognizable. And it is a great, complicated, detective story that demands more than one viewing to understand because it was cut up so badly that not many people understood who actually murdered the chauffeur.
You can’t beat the pedigree: Howard Hawks directing. Screenplay and dialogue by Faulkner and Chandler. Bogart & Bacall. An extremely sexy young engenue, Martha Vickers, right out of the gate, playing naughty seventeen year-old Carmen Sternwood. Her scenes were so captivating that they had to cut them down to not take away from star Bacall.
A pretty young actress, twenty year-old Dorothy Malone, in a bit part with then super star, Bogart. She was so nervous that her hands were shaking badly when she accepts a drink from Bogie, they had to make numerous takes, then finally had to weigh down the cup with lead.
LOL. Needless to say, I love this film for many reasons. I can’t get enough of it.