No couple was bigger in Hollywood than the real-life marrieds Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in 1945. "The Big Sleep" was made in late 1944 and early '45 and sent overseas to be seen by the armed forces troops and sailors. It was held up for release in the States and elsewhere until 1946. This was a big break for the movie, and particularly Lauren Bacall. She gave a less than knock-out impression opposite Charles Boyer in an adaptation of Graham Greene's "The Confidential Agent" (1945). The earliest version of "The Big Sleep" left Bacall and Bogart shy some of smouldering scenes that had highlighted their first film together, "To Have and Have Not".
Bacall's agent and others convinced Warner Bros chief Jack Warner to allow Howard Hawks, the director, to reshoot and rewrite several scenes with Bogart to spice up their original chemistry. Although the new scenes meant cuts in the film that marred the narrative, "The Big Sleep" is almost universally acknowledged as one of the best films of its era. To me, its one of my favorite American films, period.
Here is a scene that is among the reasons why I like it so much, with Bogart and a young Dorothy Malone. Note the sexual subtlety (by modern standards) and Max Steiner's great incidental music.
And here is a clip of one of the new scenes, shot in 1946. Although this dialouge is not in Chandler's book, much of the great flavor of the film comes from the novel's smart and snappy dialouge, something that director Hawks insisted should only be changed sparingly.
Apologies for the colorization. I could find no original b/w version of this scene.
Not sure I have seen that version...and I love Bogart and Bacall.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I have seen any of these.
ReplyDeleteI thought she was sexy in her glasses. I think this genre is very interesting one. The private "dick" is an archetypal American and British hero figure, What they represent of course is the privatization of law enforcement as well as the eternal battle between good and evil. Private investigators are a sort vigilante version of plain clothes detectives and are usually at odds with less astute police colleagues/rivals.The combination of champion of the 'good' and also working on commission seems to be endlessly seductive to English speaking womanhood. The unauthodoxy and cavalier rule bending is juxtaposed with the rigidity of state run policing which vacillates in this genre between corruption, stupidity and incompetence.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between American private investigators and British ones however lie in their social class origins. In America we have the organic intellectual the 'unafraid' worldly wise buccaneer type whereas in Britain they are frequently the dilettante bourgeoisie or lower nobility. Both classes are imbued with the characteristic of 'thinking outside the box' of both cops and villains, inspired amateurs having reached the pinnacle of both deductive and inductive logic in a world post Einstein where he has become a metaphor for intelligence itself. The apparent interplay between the British idle rich and the American mean street moral survivor in detective fiction is a fascinating imperial drama of moral superiority, but not of the kind we should adopt for ourselves, but only to be admired in our role models to make us all feel perpetually protected by the private sector I think.
"Lord Peter Whimsey" vs. Mike Hammer would be the ultimate opposites. The whole class aspect of this is fascinating.
ReplyDeleteVery astute analysis of the private eye genre,AA
In America the traditional British mystery is usually called "cozy", and it really wasn't until Dash Hammett and his Continental Operative (aka Fat Man) detective stories that the "hardboiled" American brand of this genre busted out of the British mold. Chandler acknowledged that "Hammett was the first writer to take murder out of the drawing room and put it down in the back alley."
Cheers Doug. The class identity of crime fighters here changed in the 1980s when popular cop shows on TV gave the working class the upper hand and these were all public employees, that is the police rather than private eyes. The Sweeney and it's spinoffs changed the perception of who are 'the guardians' in popular British culture. Their use of language and (usually southeastern) regional accents make them 'lads' (even the occasional female bit part player) just like the villains are the lads. Attention to the language in these shows demonstrates that both police and villains are now of the same working class backgrounds. Enter the 'gritty' cop to British popular culture, now the working class are smart and no longer the violent dullards of the previous era. Of course a more surreal precursor of this was Clockwork Orange, but that was too strong meat to remain available to the British public for decades when it was banned here (but not in Europe).I am interested in the subliminal messages that are woven into the visual entertainment media and in the British cop drama industry, there has been a proletarian revolution compared to the heyday of Lord Peter, Mr Holmes and John Stead to name but three.
ReplyDeleteIn America's comparatively less ossified class structure the hero is a moral entrepreneur from the other side of the tracks, struggling for upward social mobility, but strictly on his own terms.
Our 'tecs' now use the same slang as the bad guys like a rival gang from the same school....them and us and collective as opposed to individual social identities. The Avengers and the Saints have all gone to their retirement homes in Bermuda alas to play croquet with Ian Flemming, there's nobody left but us now, is the message I'm getting here. Here it feels like late evening not high noon.
Thanks for sharing! Humphrey Bogart is a true classic--along with all that noir films--B & W was filmed with the background planned out--I hate when they colorize t! They destroy the quality and integrity of the film--Ciao! Gina
ReplyDeleteYes, those guys were all "swells", weren't they?--well-connected guys with prep school backgrounds and connections with some Ministry. In the old days, authors and scenario writers liked their heroes to be hanging about in pubs only to pick up a tip from some friendly prole who would tip his hat to the gent-detective.
ReplyDeleteWell, tastes change thankfully. No longer so much of that "saving the Empire" from those grasping upstarts who dropped their "haitches" and the odd unruly foreigner Flemming specialized in. Some guy like LaChiffe fron "Casino Royale" or Drax from "Moonraker" (a German!)
I was and still am a big John Steed/Emma Peel fan . As a kid I thought Steed was English style personified. I remember actually being a bit crushed when I discovered that Steed's style of dress was hopelessly out of date even by the late Sixties. .
Haven't seen The Sweeney over here, but of course there's "Prime Suspect" and a few similar shows like "Touch of Frost". In the former episodes especially, violent crime rates seem as off the charts in urban Britain as over here in Chicago or San Francisco.
You and me both Geena. Colorization was a big fad on television in the Eighties. I always turned the color off when I watched my old Bogart/Cary Grant favorites.
ReplyDeleteThey used to say "Boys don't make passes at girls that wear glasses"...hmmm...not sure about that.
ReplyDeleteHow do you turn off the color--just n your TV adjustment??
ReplyDeleteExactly. Just adjusted the "color" and "tint" controls. I imagine in some newer television HD sets it might not have hand-adjustments. It was a bad fad. I notice that the DVD reissues of old classics don't offer the color feature.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, colorization of feature films goes back to the early days of the silent era. Films were often tinted in a different color or sometimes hand-colored in the lab (many films were shorter of course.) The first truly color film didn't happen until the mid-1920's.