The Big Sleep
Thursday 6th January 2011
NFT1 at the BFI Southbank
Opening the BFI Southbank's Howard Hawks season, The Big Sleep is amongst the directors most celebrated and championed of films. A hard-boiled detective mystery with a plot so complex, confusing and logic-defying that were it not for the strong acting performances all notion of Hollywood logic and form would be lost. It's a dark, brooding picture filled to the brim with climactic shootouts, overt sexual tension and witty one liners. A film that would, despite running majorly over budget and schedule, cement Hawks' position at the very forth front of the Hollywood studio system.It is, of course Humphrey Bogart in the lead role as detective Phillip Marlowe who guides us through the chaos and confusion of the intertwined narrative. It's his witty one liners and put downs that are the real joys to savour here; 'my, my, my! Such a lot of guns around town and so little brains' he remarks to a gun wielding villain. As David Thompson neatly puts it, "so long as Marlowe, keeps moving with assurance, and talking in perfect funny sentences, the disorder ensuing is bearable". 1 The film did however go through a number of significant changes during production, none more so than with the plot. When asked to comment on the importance of the plot to the film Hawks remarked, "It didn't matter at all, As I say neither the author, the writer, nor myself knew who had killed whom. It was all what made a good scene." 2 Thus, the focus for Hawks was upon the construction of a good collection of scenes with intense dialogue rather than an overall concern for the narrative plot and it's this approach that would prove to be the directors true masterstroke. However he did not come to this point from the start, it was only having originally finished the film in 1945 and shown it to American servicemen overseas that Hawks realised the chemistry Bogart and Bacall had established in 1943's To Have and Have Not had been lost in the whirlwind of Raymond Chandler's novel. The focus of this version was upon explaining the murder mystery to the audience rather than exploring the romance between the two leads, which at this point was in full swing off the screen. Hence the decision was then taken to reshoot whole scenes focusing on the verbal tennis of witty dialogue present in the final version. In fact perhaps the most famous indication of this is the famous 'horse racing' scene where Marlowe and Vivian discuss the perils of gambling on the sport with sexual undertones and innuendos a rife. Indeed when Vivian delivers her killer line remarking that 'a lot depends on who's in the saddle', the analogy borders on farcical.
The fact the plot for The Big Sleep is so complicated and incomprehensible was clearly an attribute Hawks greatly enjoyed of the film. In his 1962 interview with filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich he notes,
"The picture turned out to be very good from an audience stand point... it disarmed the critics because they were trying to be as smart as the fellow in the picture and they ended up being no smarter." 3
Hence, by breaking down the logical exposition of plot and narrative Hawks was dumbfounding the critics whilst thrilling audiences in the process. Indeed The Big Sleep is a film that displays like no other that rules are there to be broken, an approach to filmmaking that would be taken to further extremes by the film-makers of French New-Wave, a mere decade or so later. Indeed it was the likes of Godard and Truffaut who famously championed Hawks as the archetypal Hollywood autuer. As although his films span across many different genres, under the banner of many different studios they nonetheless maintain a congruent style and form throughout. This is none more so evident than with this his one of many cinematic masterpieces and the perfect way to open a retrospective on the great mans work.
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1 David Thompson, The Big Sleep (BFI Film Classics) p. 42
2 Peter Bogdanovich, Movie, November 1962 p. 30
3 Ibid
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Goodfellas
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Goodfellas
Sunday 2nd January 2011
downstairs at the Prince Charles Cinema
Couldn't resist the temptation to revisit this Scorcese classic and gotta say it was worth every penny, despite the shoddy film print that is. It is none the less testement to the quality of the film when five minutes in you've already stopped paying attention to the huge film grains dotted across the screen and the irritating ramblings of the ever so cinema literate couple behind you. I often think of the Godfather trilogy as the serious, slightly older big brother to Scorcese's Goodfella's. Whereas Francis Ford Coppolla captured perfectly his Italian-American protagonists' emotional and spiritual ties to their motherland of Sicilly and in doing so focused more upon the historical and political background of the emergence of crime families such as the Corlene's. Scorcese's film whilst containing a number of similar cultural and historical references, is more of a non-stop whirlwind ride through New York gangland mob-hits, illigal trafficking, police busts and drug abuse as opposed to Coppolla's more composed, thoughtful take on the lives of the Italian mafia.
This is to take nothing away from Scorcese epic merely to place it within a different realm and significance to Ford Coppolla's epic. A lot has been made over the years of the relationship between Scorcese and Robert De Niro and Goodfellas clearly displays their tight working relationship, but what had never struck me quite so poignantly before is how much a hold Joe Pesci's character Tommy DeVito has over the film. For it's his reckless, damn right unruly behaviour that produces the films biggest laughs, shocks and overall entertainment value. It is of course, Ray Liotta's unmistakeable voiceover that runs throughout the film ('As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster') and it's De Niro's Jimmy Conway who clearly holds the highest status within the group, but nonetheless it's Pesci's 'I'm here to fucking amuse you?' routine and the sight of him carving the already dead mob boss to shreds that make the film what it has become today. As for Scorcese's directing, well all the trademarks are there executed to perfection; the tracking shot as Henry Hill guides his new female accomplice Lorraine through the back of the local night spot, the pounding pop soundtrack that overrides much of the films biggest scenes (Quentin Tarantino, take note) and the sharp, quick-witted dialogue. Indeed it's the witty bar banter that the gangsters enjoy with one another that displays the comic ability Scorcese had mastered by this point in his career. Thus the cracks and whips of Henry, Jimmy and Tommy evoke more Rupert Pupkin in The King Of Comedy than any member of Corleone family.
In short its a classic that rightly sits at the top of Scorcese's repertoire, heights he is unlikely to ever achieve again. However, plans are a foot to reunite with De Niro on an adaption of Charles Brandt's 2005 novel 'I Hear You Paint Houses' which depicts infamous mob assassin Frank 'the Irishman' Sheeren at the peak of his powers. So who knows maybe, just maybe we'll see the like of this again.
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