What Makes a Classic?

Here's a great example of what raises a movie above the run-of-the-mill. It's a scene from the Howard Hawks version of The Big Sleep from 1946 (you won't find anything even remotely as good in the inferior Michael Winner remake from 1978). This scene hardly advances the narrative at all, but it goes a long way towards developing character and atmosphere, which are the elements that sweep you along even as the convoluted plot twists become more tangled. There's a famous anecdote about this film when Hawks and scriptwriter William Faulkner became confused about one of the multiple murders and called the author of the source novel, Raymond Chandler, for clarification. Chandler had to admit he didn't know the answer either, and the point was left unresolved in the final cut. But with scenes like this one, I'd bet very few viewers than or now ever noticed the omission. I guess my point is that a movie can be propelled by star power (was there anyone better than Bogart?) and a kind of story-telling verve that render details like that unimportant; and when it's done as well as this, well, you've got yourself a timeless classic.