Word: bogarting
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...shame, you almost never get that sadistic hope which a saint-like character usually brings on, that overwhelming wish to see him kick an old woman down a flight of stairs or short-change a small boy. Instead, you like him as much as you like the worst heel Bogart ever played, and you're right with him all the way through the picture...
...tension and force. But the rest of the picture is anticlimactic. It's all about O'Brien's efforts to clear himself of a murder while simultaneously busting open a huge fraud having to do with forgeries of great art masterpieces. This is the sort of thing that Humphrey Bogart shows up in every year or two, to everybody's huge delight, but the aging O'Brien isn't quite in the same league when it comes to evading cops and prowling in dark rooms...
...about the success of movies as they do about legitimate stage attempts, "The Big Sleep" would already be mouldering in its grave. Crowther and company slashed at it for "incoherence" as they gave it thumbs down with a typical sneer. What they failed to comprehend was that this latest Bogart-Bacall opus thrills while it confuses and is likely to leave its audiences just as interested as bewildered...
...turns out in the film, the story involves a young widow, Vivian Rutledge (Bacall) and a mysteriously all-knowing private dick by the name of Marlowe (Bogart). Marlowe is hired to investigate the facts behind the blackmailing of Vivian's maniae young sister Carmen; but as he investigates, he unearths mystery after mystery and murder after murder instead of mere blackmail. Amidst the razzle-dazzle, the spectator knows nothing except that Marlowe is never surprised...
Even without motivation, however, the characters and events of "The Big Sleep" are fascinating. Bogart outwitting a thug in his own suave, self-assured manner is a good scene even when you are in the dark about what either one of them wants. And inter-play between Bogart and Bacall has not even yet lost the sheen of "To Have and Have...