The Big Sleep (1946 film)

The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandlers 1939 novel of the same name. The movie stars Humphrey Bogart as private detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as Vivian Rutledge in a story about the process of a criminal investigation, not its results. William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman cowrote the screenplay.

Private detective Philip Marlowe Bogart is summoned to the mansion of his new client General Sternwood Waldron. The wealthy retired general wants to resolve gambling debts his daughter, Carmen Sternwood Vickers, owes to bookseller Arthur Gwynn Geiger. As Marlowe is leaving, General Sternwoods older daughter, Mrs. Vivian Rutledge Bacall, stops him. She suspects her fathers true motive for calling in a detective is to find his young friend Sean Regan, who had mysteriously disappeared a month earlier.Marlowe goes to Geigers rare book shop. Agnes Louzier Darrin, Geigers assistant, minds the shop, which is the front for an illegal operation. Marlowe follows Geiger to his house, where he hears a gunshot and a woman scream. Breaking in, he finds Geigers body and a drugged Carmen, as well as a hidden camera with an empty cartridge. Marlowe picks up Carmen and takes her home. He goes back to the house, but discovers the body is no longer there. Marlowe later learns that the Sternwood driver Owen Taylor has been found dead, with his car driven off a pier. ........

Source: Wikipedia