The Big Sleep (not rated)
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So... I guess there are two versions of this film. It was originally completed in 1945 (thirty years before I was born), but wasn't released until 1946, with some revisions. I watched it for the first time in 2017, but first I started watching a bonus feature with a film archivist named Robert Gitt talking about how it came to be revised before being released. Then I stopped that feature to watch the actual movie, before returning to the bonus feature, which showed bits and pieces of the 1945 and 1946 versions, for comparison, while Gitt talked in voiceover about the changes we were watching. It sounded to me like the things he was saying weren't in the 1946 version were things that I had definitely seen in the version I watched, and the things he was saying were added to the '46 version weren't in the version I watched. Which leads me to believe that the movie I watched was the original 1945 version. And yet... I dunno. Some other things that were said, or that I read online, are kind of confusing to me, and make it seem like I got it backwards, and the version I saw was the '46 version. Which actually is what the DVD case specifically says on the back "The Big Sleep (1946 Theatrical Version)." So I don't know what to think. Maybe I just completely misunderstood what Gitt was saying, or maybe he got it wrong. (I suppose I could try rewatching the bonus feature, but I really don't want to. And I'm not at all sure it would make things any clearer to me.) The weird thing is that some critics seem to think the revisions made the '46 version better, and some think it made it more confusing. As for myself... I feel like whichever version I watched (which I still think is the '45 version, regardless of what the DVD case says) was better. It was still pretty convoluted, with lots of characters and plot points that I didn't completely follow, but I do think it would be even harder to follow with some of the scenes in the version I saw having been cut.

Anyway. A private detective named Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) arrives at the home of a wealthy old general named Sternwood. Before Marlowe meets the general, he meets the younger of his two daughters, the coquettish Carmen. When he does meet the general, the old gentleman hires Marlowe to resolve some gambling debts apparently owed by Carmen to a man named Geiger. Sternwood normally would have had a detective named Sean Regan, whom he thought of as a son, look into the matter, but Regan himself had disappeared a month earlier. Immediately after his meeting with the general, Marlowe has a conversation with his other daughter, Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall), who wants to know what her father hired Marlowe to do, exactly. And... a lot of other stuff happens, involving a lot of other characters. Aside from not being able to follow it all very well, I also don't want to spoil anything. But I will say that even after the case Marlowe was hired to deal with is taken care of, he continues investigating the disappearance of Regan, on his own initiative. And throughout it all, he becomes closer to Vivian. (Speaking of which, apparently the main thing that was changed for the '46 release was including more scenes with Bacall, which I would like to see more of... the bonus feature didn't seem to include complete scenes that weren't in the version I watched, just pieces of scenes. Though honestly, she was pretty great and very important to the plot in the version I did see, so it's hard to imagine anyone thinking she had an insufficient role in that version.)

Well, despite my difficulties in following certain elements of the plot, I did think it was a really good film. Good characters, good acting, and while the mystery was the main thrust of the plot, I thought the best part of the movie was the humor. It really felt to me sort of like about 65% murder mystery, 35% screwball comedy, which I think is a pretty neat trick, making that kind of genre mashup work as well as it does. Of course, the film also rather benefits from the fact that all the dames in the picture, no matter how small their roles, were quite easy on the eyes. (And most of them took an immediate shine to Marlowe.) Though I might quibble that his getting one woman who worked in a bookstore to take off her glasses to make her more attractive, is both inherently misogynistic... and kind of made her slightly less attractive, IMHO. (Hey, I just like meganekko, okay?) And... before I dig myself a grave too deep to crawl out of, I'll shut up.