I recall watching the 1946 movie decades ago. Like everyone else who's seen this movie, I found it hard to follow the mystery plot, and understand who killed who and why. Even in the novel it's unclear who killed the chauffeur and why. The studio sat on the movie for a year or so while it prioritized its last WWII-related movies, as if holding a 50% off on Christmas candy sale. They also shot new material with Humphrey Bogart and (a much younger) Lauren Bacall, capitalizing on the chemistry the two had and would have for the rest of their lives. Inbetween there was a miserable period where Bogart was trying, and failing, to stay with his wife and not leave her for Bacall. All involved were drinking themselves to death. 13-20 minutes of plot was jettisoned from the movie in favor of the two having verbal repartee (which is the main reason people would want to see the movie by 1946). Since the original cut had been sent overseas to servicemen already, it survived and it also available on disc.The plot in the novel is already pretty complicated, and the movie suffers by having to censor it so much that you wonder why they bothered. They couldn't be as frank as the novel is about homosexuality, drug use, pornography, nudity, and so on. In the novel, Marlowe has slurs to say about this. Not great! The movie makes up for its relative tameness by having all the women throw themselves at Bogart throughout. This is already true in the novel but not to the same degree, or at least it comes up with a better excuse for it. And the novel makes sense! I still don't know who killed the chauffeur.I'm alarmed by how many typos are present, considering how many decades they've had to fix any issues. Words are often missing - forgivable in dialogue but not so much in narration.In this edition, this is followed by Farewell My Lovely, which is super racist.