The Big Sleep

The Big Sleep (1946) is Howard Hawks' film noir with Humphrey Bogart that you can watch online on iFILM. Private eye Philip Marlowe takes a job from frail General Sternwood, whose wild younger daughter is being squeezed by someone who needs to be made to stop.

What looks like a simple blackmail case keeps slipping out of reach as suspects turn up dead. The general's elder daughter, Vivian, offers to help, but figuring out whose side she's on is its own riddle. Cool, mocking and dangerous, she leaves Marlowe unsure whether he's being kissed or set up. The plot is famously knotted — so knotted that the filmmakers reportedly couldn't agree on who killed one character and had to wire Raymond Chandler, author of the source novel, for an answer he didn't have either.

This was the second pairing of Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and their sparring crackles enough that the mystery sometimes takes a back seat. William Faulkner worked on the screenplay. The Big Sleep has long stood as one of the defining noirs: murky, cynical and impossibly stylish. Stream The Big Sleep (1946) online on iFILM.