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The Big Sleep  /  Double Indemnity

The Big Sleep (1946)
December 12, 2015 - 7:30 pm
Billy Wilder Theater

Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive in cooperation with Turner Entertainment Company with funding provided by Hugh Hefner; Dini, Les and Kevin Ostrov; and the British Film Institute.

The Big Sleep  (1946)


Private detective Humphrey Bogart trails a blackmailer who’s vexing socialite sisters Lauren Bacall and Martha Vickers.  Director Howard Hawks’ prismatic adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s dystopian novel turns the tables repeatedly, constructing a universe where victims soon become suspects, and vice-versa.  Sterling direction, crackling dialogue, and the fortuitous teaming of real-life lovers Bogart and Bacall, render the film an indispensable noir classic.  

35mm, b/w, 116 min.  Production: Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.  Distribution: Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.  Director: Howard Hawks.  Based on the novel by Raymond Chandler.  Screenwriter: William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman.  Cinematographer: Sid Hickox.  Editor: Christian Nyby.  Composer: Max Steiner.  With: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely, Martha Vickers, Dorothy Malone.

Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with the cooperation of Universal Pictures with funding provided by The David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Double Indemnity  (1944)


Director Billy Wilder engaged hard-boiled writer Raymond Chandler to help him adapt James M. Cain's novel Double Indemnity to the screen.  The seamy story of a housewife who schemes with an insurance adjustor to kill her husband for the payout, the film became practically the last word in film noir aesthetics and moral vision, forever casting sunny Southern California as a place of dark shadows.

35mm, b/w, 106 min.  Production: Paramount Pictures, Inc.  Distribution: Paramount Pictures, Inc.  Producer: Joseph Sistrom. Director: Billy Wilder.  Based on the novel Double Indemnity by James M. Cain.  Screenwriter: Billy Wilder, Raymond Chandler.  Cinematographer: John Seitz.  Editor: Doane Harrison.  Composer: Miklos Rozsa.  With: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Jean Heather.

Part of: 
Archive Treasures: 50th Anniversary Celebration