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| Lauren Bacall 1924-2014 |
On
Tuesday, August 12, 2014 1940’s actress and icon Lauren Bacall died at age
eighty-nine. Over the course of her versatile career Bacall acted in over
seventy movies, starred in four Broadway plays, modeled in numerous fashion
magazines, and was awarded both two Tony Awards and an honorary Lifetime
Achievement Oscar. Today, she is best remembered for the smoky voice and no
nonsense attitude that made her a symbol of the resilient American woman of
the World War II era. Bacall first burst onto the scene in her star-making role
as an equal parts seductive and savvy con artist in the 1944 drama To Have and Have Not opposite her soon
to be husband Humphrey Bogart. Following both the success of that film and the
co-stars burgeoning romance, Warner Brothers decided to capitalize upon the
pair’s chemistry and cast them in three more films. One of the most notable of
Bacall and Bogart’s films was the 1946 crime classic The Big Sleep; in honor of Bacall’s life and career, I’ll be
reviewing this film which features herat her most sharp, slick, and of
course sultry.
The
story begins with private detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) taking a
job for the once formidable, but now retired and sickly General Sternwood
(Charles Waldron). Sternwood asks Marlowe to track down a blackmailer who has
been harassing his youngest daughter, Carmen (Martha Vickers), for gambling
debts that he claims she owes. While the general is aware of his daughter’s
fondness for playing high stakes, he also suspects that there is something far
more substantial and sinister behind the extortion, and hopes that Marlowe can
get to the bottom of it. What neither the general nor Marlowe count on,
however, is the turn that the case takes when the general’s older daughter, smart-talking
divorcee Vivian (Lauren Bacall), takes an interest in both the case and the
detective working it. As he follows the blackmailer’s trail, Marlowe finds
himself in the midst of a larger conspiracy that involves four murders, a local
pornography ring, a casino managing gangster, and the disappearance of the
general’s former gun runner protégée. Even in the middle of all the crosses,
double-crosses, and revelations that make up the story’s notoriously complex plot,
the real action lies in the sizzling scenes featuring Bogart and Bacall as
their characters match wits and cigarettes in the true noir fashion.
The Big Sleep contains one of
the most fascinating and ultimately dumbfounding plots in the famously
confounding genre of film noir. While the story begins with Marlowe tracking
pornographer and blackmailer Arthur Geiger, it soon spirals into a series of
murders, betrayals, and secrets that reportedly left screenwriters William
Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthmann so dismayed that they had to
contact the original novel's author, Raymond Chandler ,to determine who killed the Sternwood’s chauffer.
The punch-line of the story is that when Chandler tried to answer the
screenwriters’ question, even he was unable to solve the mystery. Despite its
muddled plot, however, the film engages audiences through its combination of
sinister atmosphere, razor-sharp dialogue, and hard-boiled action. Over the
course of the film’s running time, viewers can’t help but be caught up in the
danger, despair, and excitement that make up Marlowe’s Los Angeles. One of the
greatest assets of the film is its writing, which brought Chandler’s complex
tale of lust and greed to life in a way that adhered to its risqué source
material but still satisfied the Hay’s Code censors. Despite the notorious difficulties
that the censors created for filmmakers at this time, the film is in many ways
the better for the censors' restrictions, as the main players’ many vices remain fittingly
shrouded in mystery and any depravity that the characters participate in is
left up to the vividness of viewers’ imaginations, creating an atmosphere ripe
with possibilities. The film also showcases some of the most clever and sexy
dialogue in all of cinema, with Bogart and Bacall exchanging some of the
spiciest double-entendres since Mae West. With a script that is by turns menacing,
sensual, enigmatic, clever, and always morally ambiguous, The Big Sleep is a must see for fans of film noir.
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| Who would have thought 1946 was so kinky?! |
Fortunately
for the film’s makers, the talented cast creates such engaging performances that
the details of the intricate plot quickly become a secondary concern. Humphrey
Bogart creates a truly dynamic character in Philip Marlowe by merging his
beloved romantic loner persona of such films as Casablanca
and To Have and Have Not with the
street-wise and hard hitting hoods he began his career playing. Similarly,
Lauren Bacall follows-up her star making turn in To Have and Have Not with a similarly witty and tough, but far more dangerous
and cunning heroine as Vivian. Martha Vickers
provides a stand-out performance in her role as the drug and sex addicted
Carmen, capturing both Carmen’s adult wantonness and childlike immaturity with
equal skill. The film’s supporting cast all keep the action moving with a series
of striking performances in diverse parts that successfully transport viewers
to the seamy underworld of post-war Los Angeles.
The Big Sleep is just one of
the many films in which Lauren Bacall brought a winning combination of intelligence, depth, and sex appeal to a role
that, if portrayed by another actress, could have been just one more in a long line of
one dimensional parts. In Bacall’s capable hands, however, Vivian is a
strong, savvy, and independent woman who proves to be just as, if not more, complex than the conspiracy surrounding her family. As movie fans mourn Lauren
Bacall’s passing, we can take comfort in viewing her films, which remain just
as startlingly fresh and modern today as they appeared to audiences upon their
original release. If there is a heaven, I imagine that Bacall is there reunited
with Bogart, and that together they are setting the heavens aglow with the same
sparks that first endeared them to audiences seventy years ago.
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| Still the sexiest couple on screen, and they got to keep their clothes on! |
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