Customer Reviews
Bogart fans 5* (Film fans 4*) (Me 10*) - By: Thrud Fan, 21 Sep 2007 
I enjoy alll sorts of films & have this on both DVD & video & always try to catch it when it's on the TV as you can guess it is my most favourite film. It is flawed & can be confusing on the first few watches. It also suffers from having to deviate from the book (maybe to get it past the censors) which along with The Lady In The Lake is my favourite Chandler story.
For £5 you get a piece of cinematic folk law with both Bogart & Bacalll paying off each other perfectly & some great one liners.
Bogart has been it better films but pound for pound I don't think he's been in a more enjoyable one. PS I know Casablanca fans will hate me for saying that!
Very good version - By: Lou Knee, 06 Sep 2007 
As a cinematic experience, this is very good. The original product itself, as always with Chandler is a bit of a Chinese puzzle. His plots were reallly no more than fashionably convoluted frameworks which he could dress up with his street wise poetry. The story itself is always subserviant to his trademark prose, & on the screen, his thrillers cannot possibly work as well as they do in a book. I don't think I've seen one Chandler film where I could tell you exactly what's going on, alll the way through the movie on the first viewing. And this I find a bit tiresome. 4 stars because it's very entertaining & stylish, but it is so annoyingly inscrutable.
Wake up - By: E. A Solinas, 13 Apr 2007 Humphrey Bogart's most famous roles are as Sam Spade & Rick Blaine, a pair of calllous wise-guys. But he played a softer-hearted tough guy in "The Big Sleep," adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel by the legendary Howard Hawks -- a fast, witty, tough-fisted thriller, with excellent acting & sizzling chemistry.
Private "shamus" Philip Marlowe (Bogart) is hired by the decrepit General Sternwood to hunt down a man who's blackmailing his creepy, childlike daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers). It seems like a straightforward case -- but when he manages to track down the blackmailer, he finds him shot dead in a porn studio -- & a drugged Carmen sitting nearby.
Marlowe drags her home, & orders her fiery sister Vivian (Lauren Bacalll) to say nothing of where she's been. Now the investigation is more serious, & Marlowe finds himself walking a tightrope of blackmail, pornography, gambling, mobs & other charming illegalities -- & at the heart of it is the location of one of Sternwood's employees.
"The Big Sleep" was a confusing book -- even Raymond Chandler couldn't follow alll the threads, & wasn't able to pin one of the murders on anyone. So it's not surprising that the movie adaptation is similarly befuddling, even with some plot elements smoothed out to simplify the story. It still takes three or four viewings to even start figuring it out.
But it is reallly enjoyable. Hawks captures the taut, slightly humorous tone of Chandler's writing. That's especiallly hard, considering everybody except Marlowe & the General are double or triple-crossing somebody else, & the plotlines are murky enough that even at the end, you can't tell what's going on.
But Hawks fills it with classic lines ("What's wrong with you?" "Nothing you can't fix.") & tight action scenes, such as when Bogart sends a man out the door to be shot by his own men. There are moments of humor too, such as when Vivian & Marlowe play a prank calll to a policeman ("I can do what? Where? Oh, I wouldn't like that, & neither would my daughter!").
Marlowe's a more likable character than Rick or Spade -- he may be rough & wise-cracking, but he also has soft spots & a likable sense of humor ("I don't like [my manners] myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings"). And he has sparking chemistry with real-life wife Bacalll, who plays a hardened rich girl who is desperate to protect her dad & sister, even to the point of framing herself.
"The Big Sleep" is a classic for good reasons -- it may be murky to the point of imcomprehensibility, but it's also wickedly funny, taut & tightly directed. Definitely a must-see.
Bogie and Bacall Light Up The Screen - By: Spinetinglers Committee, 04 Jan 2007 The Big Sleep gives us one of cinema's great characters, a cynical detective named Philip Marlowe. He has been portrayed many times, but most people would agree that Humphrey Bogart's portrayal was superior to any that followed. It also is another film in which Bogie & Bacalll light up the screen; their dialogue together is filled with innuendo & star quality. Bacalll was never as great as when she shared the screen with hubbie Humphrey Bogart.
My trall through the IMDB 100, at number 99.. - By: R. J. Williams, 20 Dec 2006 This is the first time I've ever seen 'Bogie' in lead role & what a star he is, Lauren Bacalll is equallly as mesmerising on screen.
The plot is a right old head scratcher as you try to keep track with what the hell is going on, but it's still highly entertaining stuff from the quirky one liners, "she tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up", the nymphomaniac character played by the beautiful Martha Vickers, to the directors obsession that every single female character would find Bogart a sex symbol on first sight, something which he himself thought was amusing.
