The Big Sleep: Novel vs. Film

IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES, BASED ON CHANDLER’S & HAWKS’S PERSONALITIES
Athanasourelis, John Paul. "Film Adaptation and the Censors: 1940s Hollywood and Raymond Chandler." Studies in the Novel. 35.3 (2003): 325-38. Print.

• Chandler’s fiction has an inherently cinematic quality; he was a Hollywood screenwriter
• Censorship from about 1930-1960 “regulated the transition of book-to-film projects”. The first Chandler adaptation was produced in the 40s and the Code “shaped narratives according to perceived mainstream moral values”.
• “Hollywood gravely misrepresented Chandler’s world-view, one which insisted on not reducing the moral complexities of modern American life to the convenient mythologizing of America’s self-appointed champions of the good.” Chandler did not compartmentalize people and rejected the possibility of an ideal society.
• The film “defuses Chandler’s social critique, transforming plot and adapting characters when not eliminating them outright.”
• “Chandler’s Philip Marlowe functions as a peacemaker and is far more likely to negotiate among warring individuals than incite them to violence.”
• “Another striking difference between the novel and the film can be seen in the treatment of the police. His interest lay in the critique of society in terms of its power structure, and he found in crime the ideal means by which to illustrate societal tensions. Thus, most specifically and consistently, his portrayal of the police and the private detective’s interactions with them constitute the core elements of his novels. Throughout all of Chandler’s novels, police corruption is examined as closely as any crime scene clue in whodunit narratives.”
• “Although Hawks’s stoic masculine ethos representation promises to reflect the introspective ethos of Chandler’s world, his film ultimately presents a hermetically sealed Hollywood world where conventional mores triumph.”
• Hawks shifts responsibility for the death of Rusty (Sean in the film) Regan from Carmen Sternwood to Eddie Mars. In the novel, Mars is not Regan’s killer; rather, he helps Vivian dispose of the body (to protect Carmen) and then blackmails her. Hawks chose not to punish Carmen, leaving Mars as the fall guy and allowing Vivian to be a love-interest for Marlowe.
• The film seeks to resolve the narrative into a “neat thematic package”.
• It was actually the censors who wrote the final scene in Geiger’s house where Mars becomes the guilty party—and Marlowe sends him out the door to be shot by his own men. They were “concerned, not with narrative credibility or aesthetics, but solely with placing the white and black hats firmly on the appropriate heads.”
• Chandler leaves Marks untouched by divine retribution (unlike the film), challenging his readers’ sense of justice.
• The novel features and ethically ambiguous cop: Captain Gregory of the Missing Persons Bureau. Gregory is never mentioned in the film.
• “Chandler is careful to expose societal inequities that Hollywood typically glosses over.”
• Vivian’s presence declines in the novel and Chandler does not develop a romance plot between her and Marlowe, as Hawks does. The film is a complex crime narrative; more so a love story.
• The kissing scene in the car: Chandler uses to underscore Marlowe and Vivian’s mutual antagonism; Hawks uses it to show their mutual concern and affection.

DIFFERENCES OF PLOT AND STYLE

Poague, Leland. “Detecting Happiness: Chandler, Hawks and The Big Sleep (Again.)”Australian Screen Education, Issue 33 (Summer 2004): 122-126. Print.

• Striking difference: Mrs. Vivian Rutledge (Vivian Regan in novel) and Philip Marlowe as romantic (“classic Hollywood”) couple.
• Chandler’s Marlow conspires with Eddie Mars and Vivian to cover up Carmen’s’ murder of Rusty (Sean in the movie) Regan.
• Critical feature of the film: “exuberant comic wit of its dialogue, especially the sexually loaded exchanges between Vivian and Marlowe.
• Reshoots were done specifically for this reason.
• Chandler’s Marlowe is devoted to solitude, but has positive relationship with Gen. Sternwood.
• Gen. Sternwood seen only in the beginning of the film.
• The world’s nastiness reflects little on Marlowe in the film; in the novel “everything is colored by Marlowe’s tartly cynical perceptions.
• Marlowe is much more at ease with women in the film than in the novel.
• Motivation for asking Vivian “What has Eddie Mars got on you?”
o Novel: masculine loyalty and private-eye skepticism
o Film: motivated by feelings for Vivian
• Novel: Eddie and Mrs. Mars are comfortably estranged; not so in the film.
• Biggest paradox of Hawks’ version: despite the dark subject matter and scenes, it is a delightful movie. The blocking, cutting, and soundtrack demonstrate mastery of the medium. The crime story itself is not nearly as important as the fun Bogie and Bacall were clearly having.

ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES & EACH ARTIST’S STYLE OF STORYTELLING (Definition of ONTOLOGY: a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being; a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of things that have existence.

Librach, R. S. “Adaptation and Ontology: The Impulse towards Closure in Howard Hawks’s Version of The Big Sleep.” Literature Film Quarterly, 19.3 (1991): 164-175. Print.

Similarities:
• Hawks “reestablishes Chandler’s sultry, fog-shrouded Los Angeles as a city from which not even the rain can wash away the corruption.”
• Marlowe survives because he is tough, clever, and skillful.
• In both novel and film, Marlowe personally and professionally respects the “little man”.

Differences:
• Hawks ties up a loose end by having two cars leave the Geiger house; it was necessary for his Marlowe to know who killed Owen Taylor.
• Chandler supplies Agnes’s line that she has never had “a guy who’s smart all the way round the course”; Hawks expands on the racetrack metaphor in the famous exchange between Vivian & Marlowe.
• The film makes a crucial association between sex and intellect (more than the novel, which did not develop the romance between V & M). The scene w/Dorothy Malone, with its suggestive dialogue and innuendo, furthers Hawks’s assertion that the bonding between male and female is initiated on an intellectual premise.
• Screenwriters William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett added the alley scene.
• For Chandler, it is Rusty Regan who is intended to be Marlowe’s alter ego; in the film it is Harry Jones.
• Hawks eliminates three Chandler scenes: Mars’s presences in the house at Realito, certain exchanges between Marlowe and Vivian, and another Marlowe audience with Gen. Sternwood.
• Prior to the intervention of the censors, Hawks shared the premise with Chandler that Eddie Mars killed Sean Regan.
• Hawks endorses Marlowe’s belief that Joe Brody killed Owen Taylor and Eddie Mars killed Sean Regan, thought he cannot confirm his suspicion in either case. Both are “punished” in the film: Brody is shot by Geiger’s lover Lundgren, and Mars by his own men.

ADDITIONAL INSIGHTS

“The Big Sleep.” movie-censorship.com. 2 October 2010.
http://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=1360265

• The Motion Picture Production Code prohibited nudity & sexual “perversions” being shown
• Explicit scenes from the novel were rendered more harmless

“The Big Sleep.” filmsite.org.
http://www.filmsite.org/bigs.html

• The Motion Picture Production Code limited the film’s references to pornography, homosexuality, drug use, Carmen’s nymphomania