THE BIG SLEEP ;L.A. private eye Phillip Marlowe takes on a blackmail case...and a trail peopled with murderers, porographers, nightclub rogues, the spoiled rich and more. Humphrey Boart plays Raymond Chandlers' legendary gumshoe and director Howard Hawkes serves up snappy character encounters (particularly involving Lauren Bacall), brisk pace and atmosphere galore in the certified classic.
KEY LARGO : A hurricane swells outside, but it's nothing compared to the storm within the hotel at Key Largo. There, sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson) holes up - and holds at gunpoint hotel owner Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall), her invalid father-in-law (Lionel Barrymore) and ex-GI Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart). McCloud's the one man capable of standing up against the belligerent Rocco. But the postwar world's realities may have taken all the fight out of him. John Huston co-wrote and compellingly directs this film of Maxwell Anderson's 1939 play with a searing Academy Award-winning* performance by Claire Trevor as Rocco's gold-hearted, boozy moll. In Huston's hands, it becomes a powerful, sweltering classic.
