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Parents' Guide to

The Big Sleep

By Barbara Shulgasser-Parker, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 12+

Classic noir gem has menace, innuendo.

Movie NR 1946 114 minutes
The Big Sleep Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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What's the Story?

In THE BIG SLEEP, Humphrey Bogart plays quintessential hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe, a character from Raymond Chandler's novel of the same name. A wealthy elderly father of two beautiful daughters hires him to root out a blackmailer holding something over the youngest. A former employee has also mysteriously disappeared, and who can tell if that has anything to do with anything? The older daughter, the divorced Mrs. Rutledge (Lauren Bacall ), is flirtatious, insolent, and provocative as she does her best to trick Marlowe into disclosing what her father wants, which arouses his romantic interest as well as his curiosity about her involvement in a number of shady plot twists. In Marlowe's quest to dispatch the blackmailer, he runs into the drug-addled sister Carmen at a murder scene and removes her discreetly. Several more bodies pile up, mostly by gunshot, but one unlucky thug is forced to drink poison, after which he falls over quietly. The plot goes on and on, adding complication upon complication, but the truth is no one will care because, apart from the fun of seeing Bogart pretend to be a detective, the focus here is watching Bogart and Bacall flirt and pair up. Famously, neither the director and screenwriters nor Chandler himself were ever able to figure out who or what killed the chauffeur. Anyone struggling to make complete sense of The Big Sleep should keep that in mind.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

This film is a marvel of convoluted, unexplained plot threads that miraculously add up to one of the great pleasures of cinema. Usually categorized under the film noir umbrella for its shadowy photography and emphasis on the menace of the underworld, The Big Sleep mixes its cynicism with enough dry humor to almost lend it a sense of optimism. The bad guys go down and the detective gets the girl, even if it's not entirely clear whether she's trustworthy. The real treat is Bogart, who seems game to play tough but also self-deprecating. When he enters the mansion of the millionaire about to hire him, the beautiful young daughter of the house cuts him down: "You're not very tall, are you?" He is amused: "Well, I try to be." Tall or not, she thinks he's "cute" and seconds later literally falls into his arms. As he later tells it, "she tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up."

The movie is a great example of the importance of emphasis and editing. An unreleased version was finished in 1945 but Bacall's agent urged the studio to add scenes in which Bacall could display the insolence and sexuality that won her critical acclaim in her first film, To Have and Have Not. To make room for the new footage, nearly ten minutes of plot explanation was removed, resulting in a far less comprehensible and far more enjoyable film.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the differences between movies made within the last few years and movies of the 1940s like The Big Sleep. Do you think contemporary movies seem as if the action moves faster? How might slower storytelling affect the way audiences receive plot information?

  • If you could remake this movie, who would you cast, and why? What other things would you update?

  • How do you feel about the black-and-white format? In what ways does it enhance or distract from your experience?

Movie Details

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