Smoking Guns and Smouldering Lips: The Big Sleep

McFarlane's article is an excellent teaching resource for teachers and students of English and Media. In the opening section, he discusses the context of Chandler's novel, his celebrated protagonist, Philip Marlowe and Humphrey Bogart's screen/off screen persona. In the ensuing sections, McFarlane provides a background to Howard Hawks's film career and looks at the intricacies of the plot, the questions of genre, style and publicity that all might contribute to interesting class discussions of The Big Sleep.