The Big Sleep follows private detective Philip Marlowe as he is summoned to the mansion of his new client General Sternwood. Before the complex case is over, he's seen murder, blackmail, and what might be love.
Brittle Chandler characters have been transferred to the screen with punch by Howard Hawks' production and direction, providing full load of rough, tense action most of the way.
The plethora of killings now seems on the whole less horrific than it once did, while the film's tone of escalating absurdity in a genuinely dark world grows if anything even more sprightly as the years go by.
