Symbols In The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep (1946) is a film noir directed by Howard Hawks and was the first adaption from Raymond Chandler’s 1939 novel of the same name. The film stars Humphrey Bogard as hard-boiled private detective, Philip Marlowe, and Lauren Bacall, as Vivian Rutledge. The title The Big Sleep is synonymous with death and the word “Big” refers to an everlasting sleep. While Sean Regan is found dead after subsequently disappearing, Marlow is always up throughout the night trying to track down leads. The dark mise-en-scene contributes to the gloomy and mysterious tone of the movie. Furthermore, the director never references the title in the film leaving the audience more perplexed. In the lecture, Gillian states that film noir is dependent on black and

The film stars Jack Nicholson as hard-boild detective, Jake Gittes, and Fay Dunaway, as Evelyn Cross Mulwray. Unlike The Big Sleep, the title Chinatown is referenced frequently throughout the film to symbolize a dark imbalanced universe filled with cheating, murder, water corruption, incest, sexual abuse, secrets, and violence. Early on the film, Chinatown is associated with cheating when Gittes shares a dirty joke, “A man who is bored with his wife decides to “screw like a Chinaman.” Chinatown represents a place of corruption where law enforcement does as “little as possible to help.” Jake holds a pessimistic, cynical, and apathetic view of the world because he feels powerless to the injustice and underlying forces of corruption and power in both Chinatown and Los Angeles. According to Gillian, two traditional conventions of film noir in Chinatown are themes of corruption and depravity. For example, Jake Gittes describes working for the D.A. in Chinatown: “I was trying to keep someone from being hurt. I ended up making sure she was hurt.” And that is what happens here. Here, Jake leaves Chinatown because he tried to help a woman, but his intervention inevitably hurt her. The injustices of law enforcement and conspiracies follow him on his venture to L.A, most notably with his former colleague Lt. Lo Excabar and Noah Cross who “owns the police” and practically the whole town. There is a clear animosity