The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made

The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made Alamy Film noir The Big Sleep was released 75 years ago. All these decades later, the film's judgemental Wikipedia entry tuts that it "is impossible to follow", and is celebrated by "movie-star aficionados" only because "they consider the Bogart-Bacall appearances more important than a well-told story". "The notable thing about The Big Sleep," he tells BBC Culture, "is that it adheres to restricted narration: it only shows what one person sees and hears – in this instance Marlowe. Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer-winning Chicago Sun-Times critic, noted that the film's "charge" was missing: "This is a case where 'studio interference' was exactly the right thing." "Freud's concept of the uncanny is useful in explaining the difference between a meaningless film and a mysterious film," says Buckland.