The Big Sleep (1978)

User Rating:

5.4/10   

Director:

Michael Winner

Writers:

Raymond Chandler (novel)
Michael Winner (writer)

Release Date:

10 May 1978 (France)

Genre:

Crime | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

Tagline:

Some days business is good - and some days it's murder!

Plot:

Set in England, rather than California, the story follows Raymond Chandler's book fairly closely otherwise...

Plot Keywords:

Blackmail | Investigation | Cynicism | Remake | Craziness

Cast

Robert Mitchum	...	Philip Marlowe
Sarah Miles	...	Charlotte Sternwood
Richard Boone	...	Lash Canino
Candy Clark	...	Camilla Sternwood
Joan Collins	...	Agnes Lozelle
Edward Fox	...	Joe Brody
John Mills	...	Inspector Jim Carson
James Stewart	...	General Sternwood
Oliver Reed	...	Eddie Mars
Harry Andrews	...	Norris
Colin Blakely	...	Harry Jones
Richard Todd	...	Commander Barker
Diana Quick	...	Mona Grant
James Donald	...	Inspector Gregory
John Justin	...	Arthur Geiger

Runtime:

99 min

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Colour:

Colour (Technicolor)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16 | Singapore:M18 | Germany:16 | West Germany:16 (nf) | Australia:M | France:U | Norway:16 | Sweden:15 | USA:R | Iceland:16

Filming Locations:

Avery Hill Park and Winter Gardens, Avery Hill Park, Bexley Road, Greenwich, London, England, UK

Company:

Incorporated Television Company (ITC)

Trivia:

Robert Mitchum was sixty when the movie was filmed in the autumn of 1977, much older than the 38-year-old Marlowe of the novel.

Quotes:

Charlotte Sternwood: [when Marlowe declines to blackmail her] Wha-? You don't want money?
Philip Marlowe: Oh sure. All I itch for is money. I'm so greedy that for fifty pounds a day plus expenses on the day I work, I risk my future, the hatred of the cops, of Eddie Mars and his pals, I dodge bullets and put up with slaps and say "Thank you very much. If you have any further trouble please call me: I'll just put my card here on the table." I do all that for a few pounds...

Movie Connections:

Follows Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

Soundtrack:

Won't Somebody Dance With Me

Who greenlit this and how drunk were they at the time?

The Big Sleep has to be the most bizarre pitch of the 70s: giving Michael Winner carte blanche to transfer Philip Marlowe from LA's mean streets to the Green Streets of suburban England. With so many of the stellar supporting cast just so terribly wrong for their parts – a drunken Richard Boone with his leg in a cast as an unintentionally comical Lash Canino, Sarah Miles with the worst wardrobe and the biggest Afro you've ever seen on a white woman displaying all the sex appeal of a decomposing antelope in the Lauren Bacall role, Edward Fox as a bookie, John The Thief of Bagdad Justin as a glass-eyed gay blackmailer and Richard Todd as the police commissioner – it's only Robert Mitchum who keeps the thing afloat, even managing to keep a straight face when confronted with such dangerous characters as Dudley Sutton and Derek Deadman. On one level it is perversely watchable without ever being gleefully bad, but like almost all of Winner's films it shows his amazing ability to flatten any material he gets his hands on. Still, at least Mitchum amused himself on the set telling any passing Arabs he saw that Michael Winner was forcing the cast to give 25% of their salary to Mossad and then giving them the director's home address – "You can't miss it, it's the one with the effigy of Yasser Arafat hanging from the chimney."