The Big Sleep is Anything but a Big Yawn

While reading the screenplay for The Big Sleep, I found myself forgetting that William Faulkner had anything to do with it. It was so unlike anything we’ve read by Faulkner up to this point that I struggled with fitting it into the spectrum of Faulknerian literature. That being said, I enjoyed both the screenplay and the movie, and would recommend both to anyone.
The Big Sleep was written in 1944, later than Faulkner’s most famous works, which may explain, to an extent, why the screenplay is so different from rest of Faulkner’s work. Also, the silver screen is an entirely different medium from any Faulkner had written before. In a screenplay there is no room for rambling sentences, detailed descriptions, or stream of consciousness narration. Also, the theme of a detective-type story sans racial, incestual, or war-related tensions and subtexts is a departure from Faulkner’s normal MO. William Faulkner just doesn’t DO stories like this. The Big Sleep screenplay was adapted from a novel written by Raymond Chandler, so the overall story was not Faulker’s own. Still, the writing in the screenplay is not typical of Faulkner; he had to modify his way of writing to fit the medium. I think he had a great deal of help from the other writers, though, because the screenplay is so unlike his normal writing.
Even though The Big Sleep is so different from Faulkner’s novels and short stories, there are still a few Faulknerian characteristics in the screenplay. To begin with, the women in the movie—namely the two Sternwood daughters—are extremely sexualized. From the beginning, they are described in sexual terms, the eldest flashing her bare legs for Philip Marlowe and the youngest coming on to Marlowe in a very naive and sexual way. The youngest daughter, Carmen, is reminiscent of some of Faulkner’s other female characters, though she is not exactly like those women. Carmen reminds me a little of Temple Drake and Cecily Saunders, young, slightly androgynous girls who use their sexuality to get what they want. These girls get away with things they shouldn’t because they are spoiled by their fathers, and this is clearly the case with Carmen Sternwood.
Faulkner’s penchant for description and exposition can also be seen in the screenplay for The Big Sleep. Several of the character descriptions and stage directions are terribly complex and unrealistically detailed. For example, early in the screenplay, Faulkner describes Bernie Ohls as:
. . . a man who has been in close places in the course of his duty, has killed several lawbreakers, at times when he was outnumbered and they thought he was covered and helpless until too late. He is pleasant and affable to all, respects courage, loves no man. (The Big Sleep 32)
No person watching this movie could possibly know this unless he were told it. No cinematic clues can give an audience this much information, especially in such a small time frame. This is not specific to just Ohls; several other scenes and characters are introduced in a similar fashion.
Last, even within the first few scenes in the movie, it is apparent that alcohol is an important part of the story. General Sternwood and Philip Marlowe bond over brandy in one of the first scenes of the movie, Vivian Rutledge is seen “drinking her lunch,” and Marlowe and a bookstore owner spend two hours together drinking from Marlowe’s private flask. Alcohol and Faulkner are inseparable, no matter what the medium, decade, or anything else.