Lauren Bacall
The chemistry between Bogart and Bacall and Howard Hawks’ storytelling have turned The Big Sleep into a lasting classic.
If The Maltese Falcon is a work of high Modernism, then The Big Sleep has more in common with Postmodernism, with an obsession with the simulacrum of detective stories, not the quest for truth.
I can’t think of any other couple that exemplified the pure nature of an old Hollywood romance other than Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. If you take a quick glimpse at their history together, the love they shared was palpable. Bacall was only nineteen when they met (twenty when they married), and Bogart was old enough to be her father.
In cinema, age-gap relationships have been forever on display, from Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall to those seen throughout Woody Allen’s cinematic adventures (including his most recent Magic in the Moonlight). The age-gap relationship often takes the form of an older man and a younger girl, though there are the exceptions (take a look at The Graduate). Aside from the problematic conventions of the leading men ageing and the women remaining youthful in looks and spirit, the age-gap film poses questions about sexuality that mainstream Hollywood often shies away from.