The Big Sleep (1946)

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114 min – rated PG – view video trailer

Director: Howard Hawks
Writers: William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely

Genres: Crime, Film-Noir, Mystery

IMDB 8.2 / Amazon 4.5 / MRQE 92% / Decent Films A

Oscars: none

Ranked #56 Greatest Movies Through 1960, a Zagat Top Movie

Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a rich family. Before the complex case is over, he’s seen murder, blackmail, and what might be love. IMDB 8.2 rating from over 38,595 users

Legendarily complicated (so much so that even Chandler had trouble following the plot), the film is nonetheless hugely entertaining and atmospheric, an electrifying plunge into the exotica of detective fiction. Amazon 4.5 stars from over 163 users

The dialogue is hard-boiled and crackles with wit, the plot is fast-paced and nearly impenetrable, and Humphrey Bogart is coolly unflappable in Howard Hawkes’s stylish noirclassic The Big Sleep, based on the Raymond Chandler novel. Read full Decent Films review (rated A, Superior artistic-entertainment for Teens & Up)

MRQE 92% from over 45 reviews

Madison Public Library

To Have and Have Not (1944)

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100 min – rated G – view video trailer

Director: Howard Hawks
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan

Genres: Adventure, Romance, Thriller

IMDB 8.0 / Amazon 4.5 / Decent Films B+

Oscars: none

Ranked #135 Greatest Movies Through 1960, a Zagat Top Movie

Expatriate American Harry Morgan helps to transport a Free French Resistance leader and his beautiful wife to Martinique while romancing a sexy lounge singer. IMDB rating: 8.0 from over 15,082 users

It strongly resembles Casablanca: French resistance fighters, a piano-playing bluesman (Hoagy Carmichael) and a Martinique bar much like Rick’s Cafe Americaine. But first and foremost, it showcases Bogart and Bacall, carrying on with a passion that smolders from the tips of their cigarettes clear through to their souls. Amazon 4.5 stars from over 117 users

To Have and Have Not, Howard Hawks’s more or less in-name-only adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s “worst novel,” has more in common with Casablanca (including nearly half a dozen players) than with its ostensible source material. Its real claim to fame, though, is the first pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who appeared together in only three other films but remained ever after linked off the screen. Read full Decent Films review: rated B+, Well Made artistic-entertainment for Teens & Up

MRQE – over 27 review links

Madison Public Library