Right from the first image of a silhouetted Bogart lighting Bacall’s cigarette followed by a title sequence with two smoldering cigarettes blowing away in an ornate ashtray in the corner of the screen, The Big Sleep launches us into a shadowy sensuous midnight cocktail world filled with morally ambiguous cynicism, seedy and colorful characters and a dark morass of intrigue. Featuring a (some night say convoluted!) plot of labyrinthine machinations involving jaded gumshoe Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) being summoned to the mansion of a frail rich patriarch and tasked with detangling his wild-child daughter’s (Martha Vickers in a sensationally compelling performance of intense sensuality) various monetary debts she has accrued to the Los Angeles underworld. While there, Marlowe meets sophisticated, urbane older sis Vivian (Lauren Bacall) and the two begin a flirtation that carries them through their ensuing plunge into the shady atmospheric world of casinos, blackmailers, killers, pornographers, drug addicts, voyeurs, all manner of human viciousness and a seemingly endless stream of horny nymphettes and hard-boiled dames (Dorothy Malone absolutely steals her scene as a bookstore clerk with more on her mind than advising customers on rare printings). Featuring the trademark Hawksian style of rapid-fire, quotable snappy patter full of wit and innuendo, The Big Sleep emerges as a classic of American cinema.