The Big Sleep

Dir: Howard Hawks, 1946, bw (8.1*)
Gritty, atmospheric, classic film noir from Raymond Chandler’s book (who always excels with gangster dialogue), with Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe, Lauren Bacall as the sophisticated heiress he gets involved with, who’s trying to get someone to save her sister from a crime boss.

This was such a convoluted plot involving heiresses, drugs, gangsters, and gunplay, that even the screenwriters didn’t know who killed one victim. One of a kind, with pulp novel dialogue and gunshot victims scattered all around. William Faulkner wrote the adaptation!