http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038355/

Dir: Howard Hawks

Runtime: 114 mins

Well, this is it really. I mean look at the picture. Raincoat, fedora, handgun. Forget Casablanca, this is the Bogey you want, the one Woody Allen fantasises is his guardian angel in the wonderful Play It Again, Sam, the one Jean-Paul Belmondo’s Michel fatally apes in A Bout de Souffle.

This is the one we all want to be.

Bogart plays Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and the devastating combination of actor and character defined an era.

Snooping around LA trying to solve an illogical case, rye in pocket, the private eye dodges murder, deceit and blackmail, wisecracking his way through a plot so tangled that drunken writer Chandler admitted later that he’d completely lost track of one character who disappeared altogether.

Marlowe is called by dying General Sternwood to “fix” problems affecting his family. Much of this involves Sternwod’s favourite who has vanished with a mobster’s wife.

Booze flows, people get slapped around, Marlowe amongst them, but he soon starts to unweave the mess and avoid getting caught by the mob. Everyone has an angle, can you work it out?

None of this matters however as Bogart becomes bigger than the film itself in the role he was born to play.

By all means point at Casablanca, which came four years earlier, but this is a different beast altogether.

In his career he would play several roles that you would consider unforgettable and we’ll argue the toss over The Harder They Fall and In A Lonely Place later, not forgetting  The African Queen (his only Oscar), but in The Big Sleep he is the real deal.

Women fall at his feet, men want to be him, and with a brain and a mouth faster than any gun he is the ultimate rough and ready PI.

Yes, in the old days, when he used to run rum out of Mexico and I was on the other side. We used to swap shots between drinks, or drinks between shots, whichever you like.

Hughes’ LA’s sidewalks are stunning, and the city seems alive.

The plot is secondary to the fun and games however, although on watching again you will figure it out. It certainty took me several years as I was in awe of the spectacle, too busy dreaming about Marlowe’s life.

Lauren Bacall sings in this movie, but you wouldn’t know it, and her performance was slated at the time, but who cares? She is stunning, and the fact she loved Bogart so much in real life and was there for him right at the end, you know the looks she throws aren’t false.

She’ll never be Gloria Grahame or Jane Greer in film noir, but she doesn’t need to be.

There is enough of her here to shine, and her beauty is so fine and pure she has her own unrivalled elegance.

Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them workout a little first, see if they’re front runners or come from behind, find out what their whole card is, what makes them run.

It has a fine supporting cast, including the legendary tiny tough guy Elisha Cook Jr, who, once you’ve spotted him will start to see him everywhere, and of course the ethereal beauty Martha Vickers.

The producers are said to have cut back Vickers’ time in the film because her beauty overshadowed that of Bacall. Debateable, but understandable. Plus Vickers plays out and out evil, and that always does seixer in a film born in the gutter.

The Hays Code had a field day, but Hawks still manages to get the themes of sexuality, death and amoral values through to the viewer.

Despite a lack of Grahame this may have the largest contingent of Hollywood’s finest beautiful women in a single film.

Chandler’s book is tougher to pick through, but his hands are all over the script, written by the legendary William Faulkner. It’s not so much funny as it is just sharp and clever. You smile because, like all the best noirs, they’re already two steps ahead of you.

My, my, my! Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains! You know, you’re the second guy I’ve met today that seems to think a gat in the hand means the world by the tail.

Let it wash over you in small doses.

A particular classic is Marlowe in the bookstore. For many it’s the best scene in the whole film, ironically for what is not said.

In he goes, and she there is proprietress Dorothy Malone. She takes a gander at his bottle of whisky, draws the curtains, takes off her glasses and lets her hair tumble down.

And she’s one of the most beautiful women you are likely to see.

The dialogue crackles as what Hawks cannot show us becomes so blatantly obvious.

A film so big and so influential it single-handedly invented a new type of hero.

It was made during the war, released in 1946, remade with Robert Mitchum who couldn’t get close, and today people still want to be this Bogey.

In 100 years time people will still want to be this Bogey.

How cool is that?

Endlessly watchable, endlessly quotable, and one of the shining stars of film noir.