AFTER Chief Inspector Bernie Ohls (Regis Toomey) tells Detective Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) the district attorney said he should lay off the case, Marlowe heads to a diner for breakfast. In the diner Marlow fidgets with some coins, while confined to the right third of the frame. Director Howard Hawks employs a medium shot with the camera at eye level. This allows the audience to view the scene naturally and observe the full depth of the diner.
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The scene, and especially the background, has low-key lighting and a multitude of shadows (a staple of film noir). However, when the waitress moves from the foreground to the background to serve another patron, she also turns on a light positioned to appear as if over Marlowe’s head. The newfound light illuminates the background behind the pondering detective, casting away the shadows. Coinciding with the light’s arrival, Marlowe’s search for an idea ends and he heads to the phone to call General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), and winds up conversing with Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) instead. Hawks follows Marlowe’s movement with a panning shot to show the connection between the idea and the action, and the urgency it demands.
The shift in lighting symbolizes the formation of the thought in Detective Marlowe’s mind, and does it so evidently that it breaks the rules of Classical Hollywood Style. Classical Hollywood Style calls for invisible filmmaking and editing, in the hope audiences forget they are watching a movie. Hawks’ much more stylized approach to lighting in The Big Sleep ignores that convention and helps cement him as a legitimate auteur in the eyes of film critics. Not only do his films spanning many genres carry similar motifs, but they also carry the director’s mark. By breaking both Hollywood and genre conventions, Hawks proves himself to be more than simply another cog in the studio system.
