After writing about how all the women in the movie version of The Big Sleep (or nearly all) are attracted to Humphrey Bogart, I decided to cut some scenes together just to make it clearer. Not until the James Bond movies would there be so many random women giving the hero lustful glances, or inviting him over to their place.
The female cab driver is a reminder that this film was made during the war. I recall someone suggesting that the subtext of the movie is that women all want Bogart because he's the only halfway-decent man available: with all the good men off at war, it's a choice between Bogart and a bunch of sleazoids, low-lifes and pornographers. But the movie wasn't released until the war was over, due to production delays and re-shoots; the final release version included some new scenes for Lauren Bacall and (with a completely different hair style than in the rest of the picture) Martha Vickers.
It was brought out in the Hawks bio The Grey Fox that Howard had a life long preference for the passive role in his own relationships with women. The aggressive seductive female was Howard's ideal type, a necessity actually for a man that maintained a cold exterior at all times.
ReplyDeleteHoward was just maximizing his personal fantasy by populating a movie entirely with such women.