I watched this piece of crap last night - it was given away with a newspaper a couple of days ago - and turned to this page expecting to find, if anything, widespread disdain but incredibly some viewers actually found SOMETHING to praise. Okay, you can see the thinking behind it, Mitchum had enjoyed some success playing Chandler's Phillip Marlowe a couple of years earlier in Farewell, My Lovely but although shot in color and tampering with Chandler's novel at least it was set in Marlowe's home turf, LA. To transplant Chandler's milieu to England is like transplanting Chekhov's dachas to New York, it's both ludicrous and unforgivable. I can't believe Michael Winner actually had the chuzpah to give himself a Screenplay credit when all he has done is to dilute and/or omit Chandler's inimitable style covering both narrative and dialogue. From the very first speech (played in Voice-Over) Winner blows it. Chandler concluded this first speech in the novel with the words 'I was well-dressed, clean-shaven and sober and I didn't care who knew it'. Those last six words are crucial to establishing the character of Marlowe - the Big Sleep was the first novel in which Marlowe appeared - so what does Winner do? Add some description of his own and OMIT those last six words. From then on it's downhill all the way. There's absolutely no chemistry between ANY of the characters in whatever combination. Equally ludicrous is the notion that in 1978 a bookstore like Geiger's would flourish in an English town. Consider: this is the kind of bookstore that purports to specialise in First Editions but is really supplying Pornography via a 'back room' accessible only to known customers who leave clutching plain brown packages. A couple of scenes later Sarah Miles shows Marlowe the nude pictures of her sister and tells him that unless she pays the blackmailers what they demand the pictures will wind up in porno magazines. Have I made my point? In 1978 'porn' was readily available, albeit on the 'top shelf' of every newsagents in the land so how could a shop like Gieger's hope to make a dirty buck. There are also pathetic attempts to explain why Marlowe, an American, is working as a private detective in England - he came over in the war and forgot to go back. Virtually everyone is miscast. John Mills as the character based on Marlowe's Bernie Ohls (Regis Toomey in the Bogie version)? I think not. Ohls was as cynical as Marlowe himself not a 'gentleman policeman' as Mills plays him. Candy Clark as the psychotic younger sister has all the sex appeal of a stale courgette and only a bigger psychotic would be interested in seeing her naked. Equally laughable is Edward Fox as Joe Brodie. Brodie was a cheap grifter not the kind of Englishman who drives around the shires in flat cap, blazer, flannels and silk kerchief and can be found any Suday lunchtime in the Dog and Duck, Berkshire nursing a half of bitter. More? Sorry, it was bad enough watching this drek so don't ask me to write about it as well. Minus ten stars.
Review of The Big Sleep
