The Bogart-Bacall team's playful, pattycake exchanges are quite dated now, although at times still quite salacious, and the adaptation of the labyrinthine Raymond Chandler mystery novel is not as baffling as it is reputed to be. However, there is also a grand confidence in the allure of film noir atmospheric detail and narrative conventions — night-time fogs, neon lights, trench coats, clandestine comings and goings and doings — for which director Howard Hawks has a nonchalant knack. And there are unforgettable impersonations, by Martha Vickers and Bob Steele respectively, of a debauched sex bomb and a humorless gunsel. (1946) — Duncan Shepherd
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