THE BIG SLEEP – book and film version
I’ve now read both the novel THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler and seen the 1946 film version with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
Both are considered classics of their genre, and deservedly so.
I did think the movie did a good job of simplifying the book for the screen. THE BIG SLEEP is a very complicated book, and you need to pay attention to what is going on with the various lies and counter-lies the characters employ to cover their motives. The movie makes Eddie Mars the primary villain, and Lauren Bacall’s character more sympathetic than she is in the book, whereas in the book she is at least partly responsible for what happens, and the outcome is less cut-and-dried.
The character of Philip Marlowe is heroic in the book, but in the movie he is more so. What is interesting is that Humphrey Bogart also played the lead in THE MALTESE FALCON, another noir detective book that became a movie. The book version of Sam Spade, the FALCON’S protagonist, is far more of an anti-hero than the movie version. Humphrey Bogart’s version, however, is more heroic, and his more morally questionable actions are revealed as part of his plan to bring the villains low.
And of course some of the THE BIG SLEEP’s coarser scenes were toned down for the film, which also happened in THE MALTESE FALCON. The character of Carmen Sternwood is naked in several scenes in the book version of THE BIG SLEEP, which of course never happens in 1940s cinema (frankly I don’t think it should happen in modern cinema, either). Additionally, one of the villains in the book is a pornographer, and while the movie never says that, it does a very good job of hinting at his profession. (It was amusing how the movie version of Marlowe pretends to be a customer of the pornographer by flipping up the brim of his fedora, putting on sunglasses, and feigning a bad accent.)
I do think it is impossible to have a straight adaptation of a book to the screen – the best you can do is an excellent distillation, and THE BIG SLEEP movie did that well. Recommended!
-JM