The Big Sleep 2

In Michael Winner’s 1977 remake of The Big Sleep, the confusion in the plot of the original movie is corrected, but the new screenplay can’t compare with the earlier one. Not even Robert Mitchum can breathe live into the wooden dialog.

Another failure lies in the fact that Winner decided to place the film in England. It would be impossible for anyone to put an American hard-boiled detective into such a foreign setting and expect the whole thing to succeed. Instead, the whole thing looks silly.

The remake of The Big Sleep fails to past the test when compared with the original.

The Big Sleep 1

The trouble with doing a remake of a great movie is that viewers are bound to compare the new version with the original, and the remake has to be really good in order to survive the test. Consider the case of The Big Sleep, which can now be found on DVD.

The original production of The Big Sleep is one of the finest examples of film noir we’ll ever have. The script is based on Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled detective novel of the same title. The plot is remarkably complex, but that doesn’t really matter when detective Philip Marlowe is entertaining us with one wisecrack after another. “You’re not very tall, are you?” a spoiled brat tells him. “I try to be,” Marlowe says.

Fans of the Bogart-Bacall duo have found much to please them in The Big Sleep. The dialog between these two is as steamy as Florida in July.

How can a remake compare well with all this?