The Big Sleep (1946 film) The Big Sleep (1946 film) The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The film stars Humphrey Bogart as private detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as Vivian Rutledge in a story about the "process of a criminal investigation, not its results." William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman co-wrote the screenplay. In 1997, the U.S. Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant," and added it to the National Film Registry. Because the film was scheduled for release a
The Big Sleep the case now over, Marlowe goes to a local bar and orders several double Scotches. While drinking, he begins to think about Mona "Silver-Wig" Mars. He never sees her again. "The Big Sleep", like most of Chandler's novels, was written by what he called "cannibalizing" his short stories. Chandler would take stories he had already published in the pulp magazine "Black Mask" and rework them into a coherent novel. For "The Big Sleep", the two main stories that form the core of the novel are "Killer in the Rain" (published in 1935) and "The Curtain" (published in 1936). Although the