86
Metascore
19 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertIt 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.
- 100EmpireKim NewmanEmpireKim NewmanBogart as Marlowe is compelling in this classic thriller that is complex but triumph of atmospheric cool.
- 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.
- 88ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliThe 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.
- 80The GuardianPeter BradshawThe GuardianPeter BradshawThe 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.
- The Big Sleep is as fresh and perverse as ever, and remains one of Hollywood's most entrancingly strange bedtime stories.
- 80Even 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.
- 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.
- 40The New York TimesBosley CrowtherThe New York TimesBosley CrowtherThe 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.