‘Noirvember’ at Greenwich Village’s Quad Cinema Begins With Howard Hawks’s ‘The Big Sleep’

The cinematic punsters responsible for programming at Greenwich Village’s Quad Cinema are bringing us a series of films titled “Noirvember” and begin with a mainstay of the genre, Howard Hawks’s “The Big Sleep” (1946). Based on a Raymond Chandler novel of the same name, the picture is regularly cited by this critic or that filmmaker as a notable American movie. In 1997, the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry. Upon its initial release, “The Big Sleep” racked up impressive profits.Audiences back in the day were likely queuing up less for a vicarious journey through the back alleys of Los Angeles than for an extended glimpse of Hollywood’s latest power couple, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The two had met on the set of Hawks’s “To Have and Have Not” (1944), and proved to have chemistry both on screen and off. Bacall’s invitation to “blow your lips and whistle” was not taken idly by Bogart: He divorced his wife, wed Bacall, and soldiered on as a box office draw.Hawks, Bogart, and Bacall weren’t the only talents affiliated with “To Have and Have Not” who reconvened for “The Big Sleep”: William Faulkner had a hand in adapting Ernest Hemingway for the earlier film, and did his best with Chandler’s novel. Faulkner’s trials with Hollywood are the stuff of legend. He quoted Dante whenever entering the state of California: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” The great American novelist worked on the story with a Hawks regular, Leigh Brackett, a screenwriter who was a science fiction specialist. The treatment went on to receive additional tidying up by Hawks and Jules Furthman, largely because they worried the story would prove too racy for the censors. The novel was, after all, replete with pornography, homosexuality, and young seductresses on the make. Hawks and his crew did their best to downplay the salacious content without excising it altogether. One of the best scenes has Philip Marlowe (Bogart) engaging in conversation with Vivian Rutledge (Bacall), ostensibly about horse racing. Faulkner, Brackett, and company clearly had fun with the saucy repartee.Via Wikimedia Commons“The Big Sleep” is eminently quotable, filled, as it is, with quips that often feel like they’ve been airlifted from a Marx Brothers movie. A passing reference to Marcel Proust is used for a come hither insinuation. When Marlowe is caught in an unwanted moment of womanly attention, he explains to an offended third party that “she tried to sit on my lap when I was standing up.” Bogart is in especially fine fettle when his etiquette is called into question: “I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. I don’t like ’em myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings.”All of which is some recompense for a movie that is more of a chore to watch than an admirer might like to admit. As an example of film noir — what with its rampant skullduggery, weaselly supporting characters, and bravura play of dramatic lighting — “The Big Sleep” can’t be beat. Storywise, it’s a slog. The plot is renowned for being a muddle — even Chandler couldn’t untangle the knots in his Byzantine tale of blackmail, murder, and familial dysfunction. As it is, Marlowe spends a lot of time shuttling back-and-forth between this thug, that dame, and yet another isolated Los Angeles outpost. Frustrating it is, especially for a viewer primed for suspense.Bogart appeared in several pictures that traded narrative dynamics for the quiddities of character, including two by John Huston: the similarly impenetrable “The Maltese Falcon” (1941) and the willfully cockeyed “Beat the Devil” (1953). These movies have their admirers, particularly for those who treasure ace supporting actors like Peter Lorre and Robert Morley. Apologists for “The Big Sleep” will point up the chemistry between Bogart and Bacall, Sidney Hickox’s cinematography, and Hawks’s tart, if sometimes wandering, tone. Should these attributes sound fetching enough on their own terms, you’ll extend the requisite amount of charity and plunk down your money. Besides, is there anyone, at least according to Faulker and crew, who doesn’t think that Humphrey Bogart gets cuter with every minute?

‘Noirvember’ at Greenwich Village’s Quad Cinema Begins With Howard Hawks’s ‘The Big Sleep’

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