The Big Sleep, in cinemas around the UK now

[Chris Burgess]

The Big Sleep is being re-released in cinemas alongside the BFI Southbank season celebrating the multifaceted and legendary director Howard Hawks. 

Hawk's stylish and witty adaptation of Raymond Chandler's captivating detective story The Big Sleep reveals treachery and deceit at every turn. Private detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) discovers there is no-one he can trust when he investigates the messy lives of the Sternwood family. The rich and ailing General Sternwood (Charles Waldron) asks Marlowe to investigate the gambling debts of his dissolute and coquettish daughter Carmen. The detective rapidly finds himself entangled in a dark web of duplicity and murder — and consumed by a growing, intensely erotic attraction to Carmen's elder sister, the seductive divorcee Vivian (Lauren Bacall). 

Famously, even Chandler was confused by his opaque thriller - join him and lose yourself in the mystery of The Big Sleep.

For further venues and to watch the trailer, visit bfi.org.uk/releases