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THE BIG SLEEP (1977)
Magna DVD (region 4)
d. Michael Winner; pr. Elliott Kastner, Michael Winner; scr. Michael Winner; novel. Raymond Chandler; ph. Robert Paynter; m. Jerry Fielding; ed. Freddie Wilson; cast. Robert Mitchum, Sarah Miles, Richard Boone, Candy Clark, Joan Collins, Edward Fox, John Mills, Oliver Reed, James Stewart, Harry Andrews, James Donald (99 mins)

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Re-Setting Dark & Foreboding Southern California Film Noir in Bright but Overcast London

Following the hit film Death Wish, with Charles Bronson, director Michael Winner began adapting projects himself, first The Sentinel and then The Big Sleep. 

For The Big Sleep, a new version of the beloved film noir classic with Humphrey Bogart, Winner chose to disregard the existing film and go back to the source novel by Raymond Chandler.  However, there was one major difference – the new version was to be produced by English producer Lew Grade and filmed in England rather than Chandler’s Californian US settings.  Despite the change in locale, Winner wanted and expected to be true to the novel, particularly to its combination of drugs and pornography in subtext.  The production managed to attract the acting talent of a fine cast, headed by Robert Mitchum in the role of detective Phillip Marlowe (a role he already had played in the earlier film noir update of Farewell My Lovely).  The Big Sleep also marked Winner’s return to his native England after several years making American films: indeed, what remains intriguing about The Big Sleep is its attempt to transfer American film noir to upbeat London degeneracy.  Most critics agreed that the fine effort was in vain and that Winner had merely helmed an unsuccessful hybrid film which, shorn of the film noir qualities that so kept the original in high regard, failed to develop anything of the needed atmosphere.  Winner was for his part unrepentant.

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Synopsis (contains spoilers)

The Big Sleep follows the exploits of American detective Phillip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) in London. 

Mitchum is called to the estate of a wealthy American, James Stewart, who wants Mitchum to investigate a blackmail case involving one of his two rather wayward daughters (Candy Clark and Sarah Miles).  Miles questions Mitchum too, wanting to find out if he is there to look into the disappearance of her missing husband.  Mitchum follows a lead on the case, arriving at a bookstore where a woman (Joan Collins) discourages him.  Mitchum follows a customer out of the store and scares him into dropping his purchase and running off.  Inside the purchase is a smutty “Schoolgirls” pornographic publication.  Mitchum follows the would-be blackmailer to a house where the blackmailer is shot dead and Mitchum sees that Clark has been drugged up and is posing for nude pictures.  Mitchum carries her away from the murder scene and returns her to Miles’ care.  Sometime later, Miles shows up with some fair intrigue of her own and Mitchum is shot at by someone.  Soon, when Stewart’s car is driven into the ocean and recovered with a body inside, Mitchum becomes an associate of Scotland Yard detectives (including John Mills).  At a murder victim’s house, Mitchum is surprised to discover the presence of nightclub owner Oliver Reed, who has frequently been entertaining Miles in his establishment.  Now Mitchum wonders how Reed is connected and whether the case will soon involve Miles’ missing husband after all.

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Sensationalizing the Hypocrisy of England's Facade of Moral Decency & Purity

With a convoluted plot unfolding in a quick and episodic, if straight-forward, manner, The Big Sleep is an engrossing detective story. 

Although not ostensibly film noir in visual design, the film is effective as a continuation of what was emerging as Winner’s inherent interest in sensationalism.  Here it is given an almost self-referential context.  Winner uses the increased liberty in censorial pressure to suggest a seamy underworld of sexual exploitation, and in his nude shots of Clark at a murder scene captures the dangerous titillation of sex and murder that underpins the world of human sensationalistic pursuits – of vice – that Winner wants to expose in a uniquely English setting.  Such vice is common-place in America and Winner uses that given context to transplant it into contemporary London, exploring in consequence the moral hypocrisy of a staid English veneer.  Indeed, Winner fills the film with old men, as if it is their world that is being assessed.  But, for Winner, what challenges the laws of these old men and turns them towards either vice or repression of vice is that bold proposition of loose female morality.  In that, Winner’s version of The Big Sleep is a post-feminist, post-sexual revolution version of the Chandler tale.  It is Clark and Miles who are the catalytic characters here, the world of men in a chaotic reaction to both their sexuality and unhindered passion.  They are the core of this world.

Winner thus depicts a London where changing sexual mores are undermining traditional Patriarchal codes of behaviour.  Clark in particular is an untamed force, her father unable to control her and the efforts of her immorality being felt on those men who fall under her rather malevolently playful sexuality. 

Marlowe is the man to resist her and for Winner, echoing the original Chandler character, is a moral force in a crumbling moral order, a man with a clear honour code in a world where such is being constantly undercut by greed and sexual desire.  Like other Winner films, it essays the position of old men in a changing moral order, but finds great dignity and stature in Mitchum here.  The plot convolutions thus exists to reveal the way in which circumstances unwind to affect individual destiny: that corruption and vice are now the system which threatens to engulf decent men.  While in such films as The Mechanic and Scorpio director Winner had seen such men fail to beat the system which would entrap them, here in The Big Sleep, he celebrates the triumph of the traditional man of honour over the vile and sleazy world of modern morality.  As much as Winner loves to reveal the sensationalistic aspects of the amoral pressure beneath the English façade of decency, so too he finds much pleasure in the triumph of the older, moral man.

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From Noir Iconography to Pornographizing Women's Behaviour

The visual transfer is an effective anamorphic widescreen, preserving the original aspect ratio, unlike many other low-priced releases from this distributor. 

The opening point of view car shot suggests a journey (into the past) and is neatly echoed in the film’s end which brings the sense of completion to the journey undertaken at the start.  Much is made of open frame symmetry in composition and as usual Winner favors people standing in or moving in and out of mid-ground compositions.  The sets are duly elaborate in detail and there is less emphasis on zooms than in previous Winner films.  Pornography is nicely suggested as the force which effectively turns Patriarchal morality and tradition against itself and the sexual intrigue running through the film is palpable, especially in the way women behave and are framed, dressed or not dressed.  Cuts and slow pans are used to direct visual interest and the use of flashbacks is incorporated into the flow of narrative.  Despite the odd night shot, much is made of work in the daylight hours, further distancing the film from classic noir iconography.  A reference to the TV broadcast of Miss World functions as a nice allusion to the current sexually acceptable commodification of women in contrast to the pornography and lascivious behaviour around it in the real world.  Low angles feature as do cuts to close-ups and mid-shots as the camera alternates closing in and drawing back.  Good use is made of locations. 

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Ambient Catalysts of Moral Change

The sound transfer is available in Dolby digital mono only but is crisp and efficient within those inherent limits. 

The score nicely balances a sense of past and present and manages to be suspenseful and distinctive as needed.  This score can be engagingly offbeat at times and segue into muted ambient diegetic effects.  Mitchum’s voice over narration anchors the film and smoothes over its sense of pacing; giving a story-telling hard-boiled quality as much of author Chandler’s distinctive dialogue is kept intact.  The flashback utilizes voice-over by another character but Winner’s straight narrative of connection prevents any confusion – it is an aid to the surplus of exposition required by the plot.  Voices are always clear and there is some distinction to the background although a slight hiss is audible at higher volume settings.  The ambience of the nightclub, police station and other properties carry a minor distinction: but, backgrounds tend to be similar in this transfer, with details smoothed over in favor of the flat mono tones inherent in transfer limitations.  The contrast between male and female voices works effectively as both Clark and Miles are thus connoted as wild and undisciplined figures whose plot involvement makes them catalysts of moral change.  The score is cued to action, suspense and intrigue and.  Car tire noise is well used but there is little sense of any London street ambience and little differentiation between indoors and outdoors.

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