If nothing else, I like it because it set up Bergman's character as a type to be made fun of by Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not before she and Bogie showed moviegoers what a love story was REALLY like.

Hmm. I have never seen this. I am hesitant to do so, simply because I've heard so many great things about it. And for some reason, when it comes to classic movies, when I go in expecting something good, I am inevitably disappointed. See: Casablanca, Citizen Kane, etc.

To Have and Have Not rocks like a thing that rocks. Bogie and Bacall--damn.

Yep. I don't think the actual story is anywhere as iconic as that of Casablanca, but IMHO no one has EVER rivalled the romantic chemistry those two put on screen in the film. If the print you're watching melts through, it ain't the heat from the projector bulb.

Oh yeah, I always peferred To Have and Have Not to Casablanca.

If it weren't for the two of them 'The Big Sleep' wouldn't have gone anywhere. The writer himself said he lost track of who the killer was.

The writer himself said he lost track of who the killer was.

I love imagining that particular call. It was William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett calling Raymond Chandler to have him explain it to them.

A triumph of noir over substance.

The way I heard it, it was a telegram asking who killed the chauffeur. Chandler telegrammed back, "I have no idea."

...and the fact is, the whole novel comes off without that question being answered, which is why they had to ask it again at the movie-script stage. I got to the end of the novel and really had forgotten that the chauffeur had been murdered, and didn't care why.

didn't care why.

Yep.