The Big Sleep
Warner Bros. | Release Date: August 31, 1946 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 19 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
75
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
A very good movie (1946), and by far the best Raymond Chandler adaptation, but it isn’t one of Howard Hawks’s most refined efforts—it lacks his clarity of line, his balance, his sense of a free spirit at play within a carefully set structure. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
It is one of the great film noirs, a black-and-white symphony that exactly reproduces Chandler's ability, on the page, to find a tone of voice that keeps its distance, and yet is wry and humorous and cares. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
One of the all-time classic noirs. [06 Nov 1998]
100
EmpireKim Newman
Bogart as Marlowe is compelling in this classic thriller that is complex but triumph of atmospheric cool. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklySteve Simels
Bogart’s portrayal of the detective as wisecracking moralist now seems to be what makes The Big Sleep the best of the eight Philip Marlowe pictures made to date. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The Big Sleep remains one of Hollywood's most intriguing and enduring examples of film noir. It's a movie that every film student should study and every movie lover should watch at least once. Read full review
88
San Francisco ExaminerBarbara Shulgasser
It is by far Bogart's most successfully playful role. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
The movie's disturbing labyrinthine story of murder and betrayal now looks like a fable by David Lynch: and the witty, charged dialogue between the leads shows that no screen couple, before or since, had as much chemistry as Bogart and Bacall. Read full review
80
The IndependentJonathan Romney
The Big Sleep is as fresh and perverse as ever, and remains one of Hollywood's most entrancingly strange bedtime stories. Read full review
70
The New RepublicManny Farber
The Big Sleep, though, is witty and sinister, and in an odd way is a realistic portrayal of big-city life with Arabian Nights overtones. Read full review
40
The New York TimesBosley Crowther
The Big Sleep is one of those pictures in which so many cryptic things occur amid so much involved and devious plotting that the mind becomes utterly confused. And, to make it more aggravating, the brilliant detective in the case is continuously making shrewd deductions which he stubbornly keeps to himself. Read full review
80
The New YorkerPauline Kael
The action is tense and fast, and the film catches the lurid Chandler atmosphere.
90
The Observer (UK)Philip French
Bogart and Bacall's exchanges are wittily playful, and the only femme fatale is a minor though crucial figure who destroys that perennial noir fall-guy, Elisha Cook Jr. But it's unmissable, irresistible. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim Robey
The Big Sleep is the best scripted, best directed, best acted, and least comprehensible film noir ever made. [27 Aug 2004]
80
TimeJames Agee
Even on the chaste screen Hawks manages to get down a good deal of the glamorous tawdriness of big-city low life, discreetly laced with hints of dope addiction, voyeurism and fornication. A round dozen minor players help him out with great efficiency— not to mention Miss Bacall, who is like an adolescent cougar. Read full review
100
Time OutTom Huddleston
This is arguably the high-water mark of Hollywood’s love affair with the infinitely slippery possibilities of the English language. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
THE BIG SLEEP comes magically alive through Hawks's careful direction and Bogart's persona, which is twin to his character of Philip Marlowe. Read full review
80
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
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. Read full review
90
Washington PostEric Brace
Director Howard Hawks’s movie is a film noir touchstone, and features one of Bogart’s best good-man-in-a-tough-spot performances, alongside the irresistible Lauren Bacall. Read full review
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