Alejandro's Reviews > The Big Sleep

A killing reading!


PAINT IT BLACK

A nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy.

That was the line that hook me when I watched the classic film adaptation, the one produced in 1946, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

While I loved the whole movie, that scene between Marlowe (Bogart) and the character of General Sternwood (Charles Waldron) at the glasshouse (in the beginning of the story) was what hooked me. It’s a wonderful dialogue, full of vices, smoking and drinking, and while I don’t smoke and I seldom drink alcohol in parties, I am not prude and I think that type of characters look cool while smoking and drinking. Maybe because I think new millenium society has become too sanctimonious about the topics. I know that they aren’t healthy conducts, but look at me, I like to watch characters doing both things and I don’t do them on my own.

Funny thing that if some character uses a gun and kills some other character, nobody is shocked, but if some character smokes, everybody gets scandalized about it.

I’m told you are a widower and have two young daughters, both pretty, both wild.

It was a delicious dialogue between the detective Marlowe and the General Sternwood.

Certainly when the bundle of stunning ladies, in those gorgeous 1940’s wardrobes and hairsyles, starting to fill the screen, the hook got me totally.

I love Film Noir movies and I love detective novels, so reading Noir Detective novels is like something I should to begin many years ago.

Obviously I have watched almost all the relevant Film Noir movies that they were inspired by the same iconic Noir novels, but even so, I want to read those original books, but also many others that they don’t have film adaptation and/or I haven’t watched the movie version.

I am fan of movies and books, so I do like both formats and I have no preference of one over the other. I enjoy both ways to know stories.

The Big Sleep is my favorite Film Noir movie of all, so I thought that it was the perfect choice to be the first fully Noir novel to read.

And I enjoyed a lot since while I still love the movie, I enjoyed to read the differences on the book, to be able to appreciate a different approach to the basically same general story. It’s interesting that while the book is more open to show polemic issues (and quite impressive taking in account that the novel was published in 1939) but the book isn’t that packed of sexy scenes with lovely ladies as it was the movie version.

A key angle to read the novel is that, while in the movie the identity of the culprit ( I won’t spoil it, don’t worry! ) is left in the air, on the book you will know quite clearly who did it. And obviously that’s the whole deal in a detective novel. (Still I love the movie version because is so much fun to watch it. I have it on DVD, and you can bet that as soon as it would be available on Blu-ray, I will order it at once!)


BABY’S IN BLACK

So, you’re a private detective... I didn’t know they really existed except in books.

Philip Marlowe, the detective in this novel, along with the character of Sam Spade (in its own book series) are like the role models to the rest of Noir detectives that came after them. Hat, raincoat, smocking, and a bit (if not lots of) cynical humor. You don’t want them to be something different!

She was worth a stare. She was trouble.

Femme Fatales. Love them, but be careful, because they may be as lethal as gorgeous! But you never be sure and that's part of the fun!

The Sternwood Sisters, Vivian and Carmen, certainly are great characters and impossible to predict what they will do next.

Hard-boiled Detectives and Femme Fatales do a dangerous dance during the whole deal of the stories where the outcome of those are as important as to know who did the murder.

Noir Novels are hazardous beasts that have their own rules and they work in their own kind of universe where those rules have total sense, indeed the whole reason of why we love to read them.

The Big Sleep is a prime example of the genre and also definitely one of the most relevant titles there. A smart story with punchy dialogues and one heck of narrative.