The Big Sleep [DVD]

The Big Sleep has to be the most bizarre pitch of the 70s: giving Michael Winner carte blanche to transfer Philip Marlowe from LA's mean streets to the Green Streets of suburban England. With so many of the stellar supporting cast just so terribly wrong for their parts - a drunken Richard Boone with his leg in a cast as an unintentionally comical Lash Canino, Sarah Miles with the worst wardrobe and the biggest Afro you've ever seen on a white woman displaying all the sex appeal of a decomposing antelope in the Lauren Bacall role, Edward Fox as a bookie, John The Thief of Bagdad Justin as a glass-eyed gay blackmailer and Richard Todd as the police commissioner - it's only Robert Mitchum who keeps the thing afloat, even managing to keep a straight face when confronted with such dangerous characters as Dudley Sutton and Derek Deadman. On one level it is perversely watchable without ever being gleefully bad, but like almost all of Winner's films it shows his amazing ability to flatten any material he gets his hands on. Still, at least Mitchum amused himself on the set telling any passing Arabs he saw that Michael Winner was forcing the cast to give 25% of their salary to Mossad and then giving them the director's home address - "You can't miss it, it's the one with the effigy of Yasser Arafat hanging from the chimney."

After being available as an extras-free DVD for years, ITV's spefcial edition DVD adds a decent collection of extras - an introduction and audio commentary by an emaciated but unapologetic Michael Winner, a 5-minute making of short from the film's 1978 release, an interview with Maxim Jacubowski on Chandler and a somewhat whimsical 'on location' short with a bearded Robert Powell complete with umbrella trying to make the most of some ill-fitting hardboiled dialogue as he revisits the film's UK locations. Curiously the film's original trailer has not been included.

The American movie star Robert Mitchum headlines the 1978 British-made adaptation of Californian Raymond Chandler's famous noir novel of the same name The Big Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Mystery (Penguin Fiction). The Mitchum film is generally considered an inferior remake of the 1946 American-made adaptation of the same novel, The Big Sleep [1946] [DVD] that starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. In any case, the plot centers on private investigator Marlowe, called to the aid of a rich family, the Sternwoods, who are being blackmailed.

The 1946 American version is a classic of film noir, and an enduring entry in the Bogie/Bacall canon. But can we look at it a bit more closely? It's a Howard Hawks production, from Warner Brothers Studios. It is, of course, in black and white: Warners' made everything in black and white. And who says a noir film can't be done in color? What about the later "Body Heat," "Against All Odds," or "The Long Goodbye?" Or the famous trio of British noir pictures, "Mona Lisa," "Get Carter," and "The Long Good Friday?"

Hawks and Warners' did spring for famous novelist William Faulkner as head screenwriter on the picture. But it could hardly be more obvious that what all three wanted was simply a follow-up vehicle for Bogie and Bacall, who'd just burned up the screen in To Have and Have Not [1944]. From looking at the picture, a case can be made that any story would have done them, as long as it showcased the studio's new golden couple, and they sure didn't throw money up on the screen. Black and white. Filmed totally on the back lot: General Sternwood is supposed to be rich, yet we never see the exterior of his house, only interiors. In fact, almost the entire movie is shot in interiors. The picture had Bogie and Bacall, all right; Martha Vickers and Dorothy Malone in important supporting parts. Beyond that, you'll notice Warners' didn't even send over their usual suspects on the A list of supporting players, the people you see in "Casablanca." Only supporting players you've ever heard of are Elisha Cook and Bob Steele. However, Warners' did send over a half-dozen young studio starlets, whose sole purpose seems to be making eyes at Bogie, as if they needed to underline his attractiveness to the female sex. And the studio stops the movie cold so Bacall can sing a sexy song: hey, it worked in TO HAVE.

Let's take a closer look at the English version. Sir Lew Grade did spend money on the picture. He moved it to England, well, okay. He filmed it in color, horrors. He and Michael Winner, the director/screenwriter do open the story up, showing us exteriors, the English countryside, scenes of London. Nothing wrong with that. It's not as claustrophobic as the '46 version-- must film noir be claustrophobic? Some elements of the book and the Bogart treatment don't play as well as they did; the child pornography in the bookstore, the porn its owner is making of Carmen Sternwood, the bookstore owner's gay lover. They were hardly earth-shattering in 1970's England. In fact, it's popularly thought that England was awash in that stuff at that time. So the movie loses some force there.

Many people consider Mitchum too old to play Marlowe, and he was, by a couple of decades. But the humanity of his lived-in fact adds a dimension of feeling to the picture. His fancy car, suits and Rolex watch? It's a puzzlement. Many people also consider Sarah Miles to be no Lauren Bacall, and she wasn't. Furthermore, if there's a hairdressers' hell, that's where her hairdresser belongs; her clothes are kind of clunky, too. But Charles Waldron, who played the General in '46, is no Jimmy Stewart, who played the General in '78. The Warners' butler, Charles D. Brown, was no Harry Andrews, the British. The Warners' Eddie Mars, John Ridgely, was no Oliver Reed. The Warners' Mona Mars, Peggy Knudsen, was no Diana Quick. The Warners' Bernie Ohls, Regis Toomie, was no Sir John Mills. The Warners' Joe Brody, Louis Jean Heyd, was no Edward Fox. The Warners' Agnes, Dorothy Malone, in fact, was no Joan Collins. The Warners' Bob Steele, as Lash Canino, sorry, but he was no Richard Boone. The Warners' Jonesie, actually, Elisha Cook, was no Colin Blakely, either. And then there's Richard Todd as the English Commander Blake. Candy Clark in the English Carmen role, well, she gets naked, and Martha Vickers' is the class act.

Basically, these are two different pictures, made with different aims, and by different philosophies. The Mitchum picture has stood up to the test of time, as has Bogart's. A lot of people will tell you the English take is truer to Chandler's book than is Hollywood's. (Though neither movie can solve the mystery of Owen Taylor, the Sternwood family chauffeur, found in the family limo, in the water, dead) Then again, the author Chandler, who cobbled together three short stories to make this book, never did solve that bit himself. In sum, the English ending is much truer to the book's than is Hollywood's. After all, book and movies are called "The Big Sleep," and they are, at their heart, about the disappearance of Rusty Regan, and where he might be.

The patrician bearing of Mitchum, the venerable Jimmy Stewart, the late Sir John Mills, and the intense magnetism of Oliver Reed provide the star quality to this breathless, over-paced adaptation of The Big Sleep. It is backed by (some of) Chandler's masterful writing, yet not enough. For balance, Joan Collins provides gormless mediocrity. Calm down dear!

The British setting does add a peculiar air that sits oddly with the novel. Director Michael Winner does not let the pace -and audience- relax and breathe to develop tension and to enjoy the performances from the good actors - you may notice it feels like like a collection of first or second takes made quickly.

Winner wrote the screenplay. Perhaps they were on a tight budget and couldn't afford Elmore Leonard, Ed McBain or some such, but it shows in the great liberties and clumsy re-writing of parts of the novel. Marlowe's office is too modern rather than spartan, and feels like one of a civil Engineer or an Architect. Moreover, his apartment is too fusty and British, his chess set rather baroque. In his apartment he has a television - he does not seem the kind of man who would bother with television. And as to him wearing a Rolex Oyster automatic wristwatch? No, Marlowe is an uncomplicated, practical man, not one for extravagance - though vintage Rolexes are reliable as a character like Marlowe is, he would be more likely to wear a Hamilton, Timex or even a Zodiac Seawolf.

Good to see so much talent in this feature, though they're phoning in their performances at times, with the possible exception of the ever-enjoyable Reed, delivering his clipped lines like a baleful pressure cooker. Stewart is under-used, feeling like an extended cameo, Mitchum looks bored or impatient.

The film lacks the grit or weariness to make it more than it could have been. The character of Carmen (Camilla) Sternwood is ridiculous and brattish rather than nubile and tantalising, even as the curiously neuter portrayal of her sister will inevitably be compared to Bacall's sizzle.

The key opening first chapter with a voice-over by Mitchum feels perfunctory - the initial, and vital first scene fails to evoke the dusty, Gothic atmosphere of the Sternwood house as successfully as in the Bogart/Bacall version.

A more successful Chandler-Mitchum vehicle would be the earlier Farewell my Lovely [DVD]

A curio for Mitchum?Chandler completeists, then?