Ben Walters introduces ’The Big Sleep‘ and ’The Big Lebowski‘

Bogey and the Dude have more in common than you might think… Ben Walters, co-author of a new book about ’The Big Lebowski‘, invites you to a double bill that proves it

On January 12, 1953, the Toulouse Cine Club attempted an experiment. It showed the 1944 picture ‘Murder, My Sweet’ – Edward Dmytryk’s adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe mystery ‘Farewell, My Lovely’ – to test whether it would ‘create in the viewer that state of tension and malaise that the critics had been unanimous in describing’ on the film’s original release. As Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton report in their ‘Panorama of American Film Noir 1941-53’, ‘the experiment was negative. Marlowe’s third blackout, which at the time had elicited a genuine feeling of anguish, provoked a general outburst of laughter.’


This Sunday, I’ll be attempting a comparable experiment at the Barbican, though this time laughter will be a sign of success rather than failure. I’ll be introducing a double bill of films which, as far as I know, have never been paired on the big screen before, despite their close relationship – one, you could say, is the bastard offspring of the other. The first is Howard Hawks’ crackling detective movie ‘The Big Sleep’ (1946), also adapted from Chandler, this time starring the unflappable Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the sassy elder daughter of the esteemed family that recruits him. The second picture is ‘The Big Lebowski’ (1998), Joel and Ethan Coen’s deliriously goofy comedy in which Jeff Bridges’ Venice Beach drop-out, the Dude, is bounced from pillar to post through a trail of porn stars, nihilists, marmots and, of course, bowling alleys.

The films might seem to have no more in common than a titular adjective – why not throw in ‘The Big Heat’ or ‘The Big Chill’ while we’re at it? – but in fact the Coens’ caper is an explicit pastiche of Chandler’s world, and takes ‘The Big Sleep’ as its template. Both movies are private-eye investigations of oddball corruption, set against a Los Angeles populated by forlorn grandees in secluded mansions, over-privileged girls gone wild and a menagerie of thugs, saps and loons. Both see a man plunged into a mystery beyond his initial comprehension in which he is charged with assuring the safety of an irresponsible young woman. What’s more, both have outrageously labyrinthine plots – though at least ‘The Big Lebowski’ makes sense on a second or third viewing. The fine narrative detail of Hawks’ movie is famously impenetrable even to the most determined viewer.

As long-standing fans of hard-boiled detective fiction in general and Chandler in particular, the Coen brothers pepper their film with cheeky riffs on classic Marlowe tropes: the detective’s reliance on his car, the frequent break-ins to his home, those regular black-outs. The movie is also embedded with dozens of highly specific local references – ingeniously unearthed by JM Tyree, my co-writer on the BFI’s new critical study of ‘The Big Lebowski’ and something of a Chandler buff himself – to particular incidents, character traits and lines of dialogue from the pulp master’s work.

One crucial difference, though, remains. Marlowe is smooth, sharp, ultra-capable and always one step ahead; the Dude is a ramshackle, perennially baked burn-out who barely knows what day of the week it is. Like the bag full of underwear that his deranged friend Walter (John Goodman) insists he substitute for a briefcase full of ransom money, the Dude is a ‘ringer’, displaying the outer signs of an investigator but with none of the inner qualities of professionalism that distinguish Bogart’s character. Where Marlowe’s dedication to the case knows no bounds, the Dude won’t even let it impinge on his bowling commitments.

This ludicrous switcheroo, along with myriad other bathetic subversions of received notions of manhood and Hollywood heroism, is key to the ironic tone of ‘The Big Lebowski’. So, are the Coens mocking Hawks? Sure – but only as far as Hawks was mocking Chandler. For the truth is that the 1946 movie is itself something of a slacker by the author’s standards, privileging the pleasures of wit, adrenaline and that most un-Chandlerian quality, romantic chemistry, above its duties to narrative clarity or moral seriousness. Comparably, although the Dude is useless as a man’s man, he turns out to be a fine human being with a healthy preference for simple pleasures over worldly vanity. The ultimate aim of this weekend’s experiment, then, is not to suggest that ‘The Big Lebowski’ takes ‘The Big Sleep’ down a peg, but to highlight their similarities – to luxuriate in two wonderful movies in which the details of the case come a distant second to an appetite for joy.

Ben Walters introduces a double bill of ‘The Big Sleep’ and ‘The Big Lebowski’ at 2pm this Sunday at the Barbican.
See www.barbican.org.uk/film for details. The BFI Film Classic on ‘The Big Lebowski’ by JM Tyree and Ben Walters is published this week.

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