The Uncanny in Howard Hawks

8/10/2019 The Uncanny in Howard Hawks

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The uncanny in Howard Hawkss The Big Sleep

Christophe GELLY

Dealing with The Big Sleepas a work fraught with uncanny representations now seems

self-evident, after so many criticswhether in the field of literary or film studies

unsuccessfully strove to recapture the true development of the criminal plot unravelled byMarlowe: one piece still insists on being missing and points to the unsatisfactory closure of

the text as well as the movie. t may be the mystery around !wen "aylor#s death, a minor

character $but are there really minor characters in the detective genre, before the final solution

supposedly sets up the characters# roles for good%&, or the main criminal protagonist in the

movie, 'ddie Mars, whose guilt is problematic in the plot. n other words, the disturbing,

uncanny (uality in the novel and the movie stems from this problematic closure and from the

mystery on who did what precisely in the storyhence this (uality derives from a debunking

of the genre as self-contained and purely self-explanatory, an )ideal* of the text by which the

text fails to abide. n the following discussion of the movie adaptation of +handler#s novel,

shall dwell on this problematic nature of the plot, which results from awks#s deliberate

designs, instead of trying to explain away the gaps in the logical development of the filmnarrative. "hese gaps are indeed the places where the director expresses his own viewpoint in

the novel and develops a personal discourse on the uncanny (uality within reality, a (uality

that duplicateswith a differencethe initial mystery that, in the novel, eiger#s death

constitutes as the starting point for the investigation by Marlowe.

ith respect to the specific (uality of the uncanny in the movie, shall distinguish

three categories. /irst of all, an epistemological or cognitive type of uncertainty in the plot is

instrumental in a perception of the movie diegesis as uncanny, from a strictly referential and

logical perspectivethat will be the basis of our criticism of the movie as adaptation. 0eyond

this, the movie also stages a whole materiali1ation of the uncanny in formal terms, first

through an aestheticspeculiar to it, then throughself-representation as a way of (uestioning

the cinematographic medium itself within the movie. e shall first, then, deal with the

uncanny feeling inspired by the movie as a result from the many inconsistencies, from a

logical viewpoint, in the plot, that tend to present it as unaccountable really, before tackling

the topic as a deliberate design pointing to a new aesthetics enacted in the movie. e shall

also integrate the psychoanalytical definition of the uncanny as a feeling resulting from the

return of the repressed, but the theoretical orientation of this paper will not be psycho-critical

in itself.

The entropy of adaptation

"he prevailing approach to the movie The Big Sleep as an adaptation enhanced

awks#s reading of +handler as informed by ideological censorship and teleological

bowdleri1ing. "hus, 2onald 3ibrach4 contends that, unlike the novel, the movie chooses to

confirm 5oe 0rody#s defence when the latter claims he is not guilty of eiger#s death and

instead accuses !wen "aylor, the 6ternwoods# chauffeur, whom he says he followed after and

before the murder. 7s a matter of fact, if we watch the scene carefully, in the movie we do see

twocars leaving eiger#s house before Marlowe finds the blackmailer dead, and one of those

cars is the station wagon which we will see driven by 0rody some time later $when Marlowe

follows 0rody as he moves out books from eiger#s shop&. "his mystery, at least, is

apparently solved in the movie, which here appears as a simpler version of the same story in

43027+ 2onald 6., 8 7daptation and !ntology: the mpulse towards +losure in oward awks#s version ofThe Big Sleep*,Literature Film Quarterly, vol. 9, n ;, 5uly 4994, pp. 4?.


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novel form. 3ikewise, the enforcement of the ays +odea set of regulations having to do

with censorship self-imposed by the movie producers from 49;@ to the late 49


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the overall blurring of roles in the novel. e shall see it is (uite important that such

conspicuous inconsistencies should be concerned with the issue of viewpoints.

6econdly, the movie develops an entropic representational strategyhaving to do with

the adaptation process as a superimposition of a specific cinematographic reading over the

literary medium. n other words, awks#s interpretation is not a substitute for +handler#s textKit adds up to it and develops some lines of reading which would not appear so clearly in the

text but for the movie itself. 6uch elements as revolve around Marlowe#s $possible& guilt

impossible to integrate in any univocal reading of the novelbelong to that second category.

+hristopher !rr argued that arry 5ones#s death could be read as a symptom of Marlowe#s

aggressive death-wish against his informer, in a desire to ward off the figure of the dominated

male which 5ones represents, in his relation to 7gnes 3o1elle. ?Many other elements point

indeed to Marlowe#s possible guilt, even if this be only at a )fantasy* level. /or example, we

may think of Eivian#s asking Marlowe when he brings +armen back unconscious to the

6ternwoods# residence after eiger#s death, )Did you do this%*K but also Marlowe#s repeated

answer to 'ddie mars when he refuses to speak to the gangster in eiger#s house $) already

got a client*& is a subtle, if not sustained, suggestion that Marlowe might indeed have workedfor Mars under other circumstances. 0oth examples are also present in the novel. hat awks

adds lies in another scene, where after he brings Marlowe on the pier to examine !wen

"aylor#s corpse, inspector 0ernie !hls unaccountably tells the sleuth, with obvious reference

to "aylor#s death: )"his doesn#t look like the way you#d handle it.* "his departure from the

novel materiali1es a new reading around Marlowe#s potential guilt and once again adds up to

the potential interpretations of the plot $in an entropic way& without the least concern for the

compatibility of those interpretations.


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e already saw that awks deliberately handles the adaptation process as a means of

providing a specific uncanny dimension to the plotwhich was initially to some extent

steeped in that kind of atmosphere. 0ut the cinematographic adaptation in itself contributes to

add up some measure of artificiality to +handler#s work, for instance when he chooses to

transpose directly the somewhat literary speeches from the novel to the moviewhen we hear

eneral 6ternwood about the orchid analogy linking his daughters to flowers: )"hey are nastythings. "heir flesh is too much like the flesh of men. 7nd their perfume has the rotten

sweetness of a prostitute* $p. I&. "his analogy reveals a lack of verisimilitude in the movie

situation whereas the same sentence in the novelnot actually utteredis perceived on a

more abstract level, outside the actual utterance of a literary comparison that appears artificial

in context. "his is only one exampleof limited validity per sebut pointing to a whole

strategy of artificiality focused, among other elements, on the dialogues between characters.

"he first meeting between Marlowe and Eivian in the movie is thus characteri1ed by a way of

delivering her speech in which Eivian clearly contradicts the denotation of that speech: when

she invites Marlowe to help himself to a drink she keeps the same aggressive, hurt tone as that

with which she began the encounter, thus strangely opposing the literal content and the formal

expression of her speech. Eivian utters her speech in the same breath, whether she tackles onetopic $what the eneral has Lust said to Marlowe& or another $and a sensitive one&, i.e.

alcohol-drinking. "he same strategy is repeated when Marlowe and 'ddie Mars first meet

this emphasis on the artificiality of expression may be related, as we shall see, to the

specificity of the cinematographic medium.

7nother element in that aesthetics of artificiality has to do with the use of stereotypes

which, again, tend to present the diegesis as unreal and to defamiliarise the story universe

which the spectator faces. "hus, Marlowe is repeatedly presented as a )stock character*, as

the resourceful, wise guy, which fits very well his role as a detective. "o embody this

intelligence and vivacity in visual terms, awks attributes to Marlowe some kind of twitch

that consists in touching his right ear whenever he has a clever idea, an insight or when he is

faced with a difficult situation $for instance when he discovers eiger#s corpse or when he

cross-examines 5oe 0rody after he has found out Eivian had gone to his place&. 7n interesting

instance of this device takes place when Marlowe sits in a restaurant and decides to call the

6ternwoods# residence on the phone>Lust when he has that idea $and conse(uently touches

his ear& the waitress lights up the bulb Lust over his head, thus ironically stressing the

stereotypical episode which points to a reflexive dimension in the movie. "hat undermines the

filmic representation of the detective as ingenious and through an ironical slant which further

associates the compulsory figures of the genre with the ironical distance taken from them.

3ikewise, if we think of the )gimmicks* that characteri1e 'ddie mars and 3ash +anino $the

former toying with keys and the latter with coins& we are taken back to awks#s 49;A movieScarfacethat also staged the same kind of gimmicks for its main characterK this becomes at

the same time a sign of the stereotypical representation of criminals and a clue pointing to an

interfilmic (uotation within the same director#s work. 3astly, we cannot but (uote the scene

where Marlowe (uickly disguises himself as a )bookworm* before entering eiger#s shop,

simply by tilting up the brim of his hat, and putting on dark glassesthis very basic disguise,

which apparently functions correctly in the confrontation with 7gnes 3o1elle that ensues,

>Marlowe calls the 6ternwoods# residence but Gorris, the butler, tells him that the eneral in too ill to talk tohim. Fet, Eivian tells him on the phone that 6hawn 2egan has Lust been found alive and safe in Mexico and thathis investigation has thus come to an end. Marlowe will no more believe that lie than he believed Eivian#spresentation of the blackmail by 0rody, which was meant to get rid of the detective in fact and to enable her to

deal with the blackmail, concerning the compromising pictures of +armen, on her own. "his scene is then atonce, in its content, pointing to the tenacity and wit of the sleuth and from a formal viewpoint an ironicalpresentation of Marlowe#s handling of the case.

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shows that reality and identity are easily faked, since they rely mainly on preconceived ideas

and visual stereotypes.

e are then faced with a fictional world in which characters are stereotyped and

reality artificially corresponds to those stereotypes, which results in the depiction of a very

strange and dis(uieting diegesis. "his corresponds to /reud#s definition of the uncanny as afeeling that mixes the recognition of a familiar element for the subLect#s psyche and the

confrontation with otherness, a feeling that he accounts for by the return of what has been

repressed $and hence is approached as alien to the subLect& but which was before repression

part and parcel of the psyche $hence the feeling of familiarity&.I"he types presented in

awks#s movie contribute to destabilise the spectator in that same way, by staging extremely

recogni1able and familiar roles in a strange, ironical light that (uestions our own habits of

interpreting the movie. "hus, 7nnette uhn showed that in the movie eiger#s house can be

analysed as a place that obsesses Marlowe $he returns there four times& connected to the

mystery of femininity that is situated $as far as +armen 6ternwood is concerned& outside the

symbolic order.9 would like to point to another polysemic image in the movie, that of

+armen as she bursts in on 0rody to retrieve the compromising photographs taken at eiger#shouse. Dressed as a Madonna, +armenwhom Eivian watches anxiously as she makes eyes

at Marlowe, a sign of morbid attention already experienced by 2egansubsumes the

presence of fantasy as ambivalent and deadly, since she appears here at once as a child

sucking her thumb, a saint, a murderer, a lunatic. "his ironical and distanced rereading of all

those roles is the hallmark of awks#s staging of the scene, in which once again he puts

forward those stereotypes to present them as uncanny and (uestion their validity and function

in short, defamiliarising what ought to be recognised as a set landmark and make it appear

strange. ow does that distanced reading appear as a discourse on representation itself%

Reflexivity and unreality

e have seen how the movie builds up a whole aesthetics founded on the uncanny

through several narrative and more largely representational strategies. Gow intend to show

how awks#s movie holds a discourse on its own aesthetics, on its own ways of telling the

story. "he first and most obvious of those reflexive discourses has to do with ver$al

communication. f we remember for instance the two scenes in which 'ddie Mars#s laughable

thugs appear, i.e. when they rush to eiger#s house to prove Mars right when he claims he did

not come alone, and when in Mars#s casino at 3as !lindas they tell Marlowe Eivian

6ternwood wants to speak to himwe are struck by the fact that both scenes revolve around

the impediment on speech, as both grotes(ue characters cannot decide who said what, and

who is to speak or to listen. "he same holds true for the famous phone hoax improvised byMarlowe and Eivian $a scene that was an add-up to the novel, in the script& in which the call

to a police officer $named 2eilly, like Doghouse 2eilly, the name Marlowe humorously claims

to be his when first meeting +armen, which makes it a further intrafilmic reference& again

raises the (uestion of who is talking to whom. "his (uestion keeps recurring, especially in the

fre(uent arguments between Marlowe and Eivian, often consisting in a fight to have the last

word, literally speaking. "he failure of verbal communication is indeed a key feature in the

movie, as shown also by the scene in which the two usherettes in Mars#s casino cannot speak

intelligibly to Marlowe for they speak at the same time, and thus have to wait for his )signal*

I/2'HD 6igmund, )"he Hncanny,* in The Standard %dition of the Complete #sychological Wor&s of Sigmund

Freud, ed. N trs. 5ames 6trachey, vol. OE, 3ondon, ogarth, 49?;, pp. A49-A?A.9HG, 7nnette, )The Big Sleep: 7 Disturbance in the 6phere of 6exuality*, Wide Angle=, n ;, 49I@: pp. =-

44.

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to organi1e communication efficiently. 7nother sign of that failure appears in the scene added

in 49=< by awks, in which Marlowe and Eivian have a witty conversation in a restaurant

about horseracing and $figuratively& sex, a scene that ends up in a split between them. "hat

scene is also a problem in narrative terms since Lust after that split Marlowe meets $by chance&

Eivian singing at the +ypress +lub in 3as !lindas and she unaccountably Loyfully greets him

with a wave of her hand. e may consider this oddity, this rupture in the narrative continuity,to originate from the fact awks had to add that scene at a later period $that was a re(uest

from the producers&, but it can also be read as a staging of the limits in verbal communication

entailing a relative narrative inconsistency.

hat is then the discourse held by the movie on its own representational strategy% 7re

images more reliable than words in it% Got if we remember the scene in which Mars stages a

fake assault on Eivian after the latter won a large amount of money at his casino. "his scene is

a show put on for Marlowe to have him believe there is no friendly connection between Mars

and Eivian, but Marlowe observes the assault through a car window in the parking lot of the

casino, so that in the moviewhere awks uses a point-of-view shotthe scene appears as

)framed* by a window car reproducing a camera frameK this is a clear sign that cinema is also,or can also be, the medium of a fake, artificial representation. e could also (uote the scene

of the murder of arry 5ones by +anino, which was analysed by Marc Eernet as a scene

which e(uates Marlowe#s position as a witness of that death with the position of a dupe, since

the detective wrongly believes 5ones gave 7gnes 3o1elle#s real address to +anino before

dying, whereas in fact he sacrificed his life for her.4@ f the discourse held by the movie

stresses the artificiality of the representational strategy even in terms of images, does this

work keep a place for its spectator outside the feeling of unreality and manipulation that

characteri1es its protagonists% t seems the movie#s discourse on this point is (uite original

and interesting in the sense that it locates the agency that is liable to organi1e that unreality of

the diegesis off'screenthat is, potentially, in the spectator. /or instance, in the scene where

+armen comes back to eiger#s place and is surprised by Marlowe who asks her (uestions

about 0rody, we see her answering )yes* to Marlowe#s (uestion $i.e. did 0rody kill eiger%&

with a smile on her face indicating that she thus wishes to take her revenge on 0rody her

former lover, a smile which potentially Marlowe who is off-screen then does not see.

Marlowe#s attitude in this scene where he drives +armen into a corner no doubt reveals that

+armen#s answer is not reliable, and he makes fun in the following se(uence of the way she

naively tries to fool him. Fet, this ambiguous management of the off-screen dimension reveals

the necessity of the spectator#s participation $Marlowe being here the )spectator* of +armen#s

intended manipulation of him& for the movie to make sense. "hrough representing an openly

deceptive device, the cinematographic medium stresses the all-important presence of another

vision, which is always in the making through the spectator, whether he is intradiegetic$Marlowe& or extradiegetic $you and me&. nscribing the presence of another vision off-screen

$or in the shot-reverse shot techni(ue, which amounts to the same phenomenon& re(uests the

spectator to invest the movie with a distanced reading of images $for instance as far as the

stereotypes already described are concerned& and to consider the uncanny in that work as a

discourse that is in fact addressed to him or to her.

4@8 3e rand sommeil est un bloc magi(ue P,Avant'sc(ne cin)ma, n ;A9-;;@ : Luin 49I=.

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The Uncanny in Howard Hawks