"The Big Sleep" hat trick

I am not alone in considering the 1946 film version of "The Big Sleep" to be one of the defining American films noir. The cast is uniformly excellent, the dialogue is snappy, the action is brisk, the characters are well-defined and complex. The screenplay certainly takes liberty with the plot of the novel, but only in the interest of better film-making.

So, I was intrigued to discover that Robert Mitchum had starred in a 1978 remake. Mitchum earned his own reputation among the hardboiled set,  and of course had played Marlowe in 1975's Farewell, My Lovely, so I was interested to see what he did with the role in this film. Sadly, not much. He seemed not so much world weary and cynical as bored and jaded. The film is pedestrian for many reasons, and his plodding through it is just one of them.

The script is much more faithful to the novel than the older version, but that simply demonstrates that novels as novels don't make very good movies and that there are few modern screenwriters who can match William Faulkner, especially when he was working with Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman.

It also demonstrates that showing rather than suggesting is not necessarily -- indeed is seldom -- superior. I've read any number of reviews on IMDB that claim the original "left out" the nudity, drugs, sex, etc. of the book. Nonsense. Any adult who is paying attention knows exactly what is going on and what is being discussed. Do we need to see the nude photos of Carmen Sternwood to know why she is so desperate to retrieve them? Do we need to see the needle and the tourniquet to know why she posed for them in the first place?

However, it is testament to how little society had changed in 30 years, that the the scandals, motives, and characters of the books still had the power to titillate and shock. There is no explanation, though, for the change to the ending.

A word to filmmakers. If you're going to insist on re-making a movie that does not need to be remade, that has maintained a loyal following for nearly 70 years, and that appears on every list of classic films noir, don't try to make it on the cheap. On the other hand, if your principal is a down-at-the-heels private detective, don't put him in tailored suits and give him a $50,000 car to drive and house him in an upscale London flat.

I assume that a limited budget is the only reason for hiring a gaggle of second-rate ham actors and setting this film in London. Oh, and if you do move this quintessentially American film to London, make sure that all of the principles are British; although trying to work out why the some, but not all, of the Sternwoods were Americans living in London did provide a modicum of distraction.

If you absolutely must film it in color, keep the sets small, tight, claustrophobic. No sweeping landscapes, open, airy rooms with light, bright furnishings, or sunny gardens.

As much as I adore Jimmy Stewart, he was woefully miscast as General Sternwood. I didn't for one minute believe that he was the "very dull survival of a very gaudy life." Dull survival yes -- gaudy life, no. And he exuded far too much regret, rather than cynicism. He was sad rather than bitter, a pitiful, rather than a grand, wreck.

The rest of the cast was either amateurish or overblown. Richard Boone's Lash Canino was an embarrassment. Sarah Miles -- actually, she suffers from being compared unfairly with Lauren Bacall. She did play her character fairly closely to the one presented in the book, an unsympathetic character with no sexual tension between her and Marlowe. However, Candy Clark was painful to watch. She played the role as a spoiled brat, rather than a sly, malicious psychopath. And even at that, it is an amateurish performance. Joan Collins -- someone put that woman in a soap opera. She had all the subtlety of a high school drama queen.

Although perhaps I should not be blaming the actors; Michael Winner is no Howard Hawks. He was obviously far more interested in the violence and horror/gross potential than in the characters or their motives. There is nothing subtle or understated in the entire film and all of the supporting characters are one-dimensional villains straight out of melodrama. It could easily be argued that Winner, et al., really did not understand the essence of either hardboiled detective fiction or film noir. Their decisions as to what to life verbatim from the novel and what to leave out seem more designed to move the plot along rather than to convey character, emotion, or atmosphere.

Oh, what's the hat trick? It's the novel, which has just moved to the top of my "to be re-read immediately" list.