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Writer's pictureReclaim The Frame Team

To celebrate World Sleep Day, we’re going to be a bit ‘on the nose’ and watch&#823

The Big Sleep (1939)

Starring Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as Vivian Sternwood Rutledge, ‘The Big Sleep’ is based on a hardboiled crime novel by American-British writer Raymond Chandler, the first to feature the detective Philip Marlowe. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles.

The story is noted for its complexity, with characters double-crossing one another and secrets being exposed throughout the narrative. The title is a euphemism for death; the final pages of the book refer to a rumination about “sleeping the big sleep”.

In 1999, the book was voted 96th of Le Monde‘s “100 Books of the Century”. In 2005, it was included in Time magazine’s “List of the 100 Best Novels”

Co-written by: William Faulner / Leigh Brackett /Jules Furthman

Leigh Douglass Brackett (December 7, 1915 – March 18, 1978) was an American writer, particularly of science fiction, and has been referred to as the Queen of Space Opera. She was also a screenwriter, known for her work on such films as The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959) and The Long Goodbye (1973). She also worked on an early draft of The Empire Strikes Back (1980), elements of which remained in the film; she died before the film went into production. She was the first woman shortlisted for the Hugo Award. In 2020, she won a Retro Hugo for her novel The Nemesis From Terra, originally published as “Shadow Over Mars” (Startling Stories, Fall 1944).

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