RATS BEHIND THE WAINSCOTING.

RATS BEHIND THE WAINSCOTING. A difficulty in capturing the book THE BIG SLEEP in a screenplay is the vivid excess of Chandler’s narration. In one scene the narrator (Marlowe) says that Carmen Sternwood has eyes as “shallow as enamel on a cafeteria tray” and that her giggles “ran around the corners of the room like rats behind the wainscoting.” In the movie, those wild metaphors are lost.