David Thomson’s “The Big Sleep” comes to Iranian bookstores

TEHRAN –(Iranart)- A Persian translation of U.S.-based British film critic and historian David Thomson’s book “The Big Sleep” has been published by Elmi-Farhangi, a major Iranian publishing house in Tehran.

The book has been rendered into Persian by Nika Khamsi.

This is the first book-length consideration of the classic 1946 movie “The Big Sleep” and the first published book to compare it to the 1945 cut of the movie, which has been restored and released. 

Thomson discusses the making of the film as well as the careers and romance of its stars, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, in this book.

He also looks into the psyches of its director and screenwriters. Thomson beautifully describes a classic in progress, tracking “the way in which fantasizing, power plays and maneuver affected the making of the film.”

Along the way, Thomson meditates about why “The Big Sleep” has attained its mythic status and why it continues to move him so powerfully.

“The Big Sleep” has signaled a change in the nature of Hollywood cinema, as the director Howard Hawks shot extra scenes, “fun” scenes, to replace the ones in which the murders are explained, and in so doing left the plot unresolved.

Thomson, renowned as one of the greatest living authorities on the movies, is the author of “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film”, now in its fifth edition. 

He is also the author of more than twenty-five books, including biographies of Orson Welles and David O. Selznick, and the pioneering novel “Suspects”, which borrowed its characters from film.

source: Tehran Times