The Big Sleep

Howard Hawks’s classic thriller captures the tough and darkly humorous world of Raymond Chandler’s most complicated novel, with Humphrey Bogart at his best as Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the fast-talking rich kid who invites him into an impossibly intricate web of blackmail and murder. Even Hawks cannot explain one of the killings, which in any case take a back seat to the sophisticated Marlowe’s more pressing task: unravelling the enigmatic psychologies of his enemies and so-called friends. We present the 1946 version of the film.