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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 7, No. 30 |
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"THE BLACK DAHLIA"  |
DePalma's new film fails
on nearly every level
of TheColumnists.com
Sometimes, when you anxiously anticipate a film you just know you're going to love, it finally shows up--and you feel like you've stepped into a vacant elevator shaft on a 60-story building. Once you start falling down that sort of hole, there's no point in looking for the silver lining. There isn't going to be one.
That's how I felt once I started watching Brian De Palma's "The Black Dahlia," the new film adapted from the 1987 novel by James Ellroy, which was, in turn, based on the infamous unsolved 1947 Los Angeles murder case. The movie goes wrong in just about every way a film can go wrong. This is to film noir what Tang is to orange juice.
De Palma, who did such an impressive job re-creating the Prohibition Era for his 1987 "The Untouchables," never really convinces you that you're in 1947 Los Angeles, despite the lofty expenditures for period costumes, vehicles and sets. His film looks like a series of postcard shots, snapped on a well-dressed Hollywood soundstage. It cries out for a more realistic look.
And the storyline is beyond confusing. I haven't read the Ellroy novel, but it must have made more sense that the movie does. Every step of the way, you're scratching your head and asking yourself, "What's going on here?"
Try, for instance, to figure out the relationship between rugged Detective Sgt. Leland "Lee" Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart) and his girl-friend Kay Lake (Scarlett Johansson). Is he her lover or her former pimp? She doesn't seem to need him so much or she wouldn't be so anxious to take up with his partner, Detective Dwight has a fixation on murder victim Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner), the mutilated lady the papers nicknamed "The Black Dahlia" for reasons never adequately explained in the movie. (It has something to do with the 1946 Alan Ladd murder mystery called "The Blue Dahlia.")
Don't even try to figure out what two-time Best Actress Oscar winner Hilary Swank is doing in the movie. She plays a high society dame called Madeleine Linscott, who likes to hang out at lesbian night clubs while she isn't vamping L.A. police detectives. Swank has no business playing a femme fatale. If she's lucky, the Academy won't make her give back her two well-deserved Oscars once all the members have seen her gawdawful performance in "Black Dahlia."
Nearly everybody in the movie seems miscast except maybe Eckhart, who looks seedy enough to be a corrupt L.A. cop circa 1947. Poor Josh Hartnett looks like a male model auditioning for the "plainclothes dick" part in a new edition of The Village People. And Scarlett Johansson is excrutiating to watch trying to look sexy in her 1940s wardrobe, wearing what must have been a metric ton of bright red lipstick. She really makes you appreciate Lana Turner, who could toss off a role like this with just a couple of steamy glances, polishing off both Hartnett and Eckhart without even having to touch up her underarm deodorant. Johansson should have watched Kim Basinger as a 1940s femme fatale in "L.A. Confidential," an earlier James Ellroy adaptation. That's how it's done--and it won Basinger an Oscar. In "Dahlia," Johansson couldn't heat up a battery-powered hand-warmer.
But Hartnett, Eckhart, Johansson and especially Swank are all top quality actors, under normal circumstances. "Black Dahlia" gives them no normal circumstances. Their roles are patchwork. Maybe screenwriter Josh Friedman turned in a brilliant script and somebody chopped it all up. Whatever happened to it, the script is a quagmire that sinks everybody up to his or her neck from the start.
As for De Palma, he's no longer the whiz kid he was in the days of "Sisters," "Obsession," "Dressed to Kill," "Body Double" and the other thrillers that caused him to be so frequently referred to as a "young Hitchcock." After seeing "Black Dahlia," I'm expecting lots of those reviewers to recant all the nice things they said about De Palma.
One of the most ludicrous scenes in the movie is the big one that takes place in a lesbian night club, featuring real-life contemporary lesbian songstress k.d. lang as the club singer, dressed in male tux and wearing her usual male crewcut hairdo, entertaining a crowd of luminous lesbians, all kissing and hugging on the dance floor. I don't claim to be an expert on L.A. gay clubs of the 1940s, but I seriously doubt there was anything quite as grand as this plush showcase, which looks like The homo Mocambo or perhaps the Ciro's for queer-os. I'm guessing 1947 gays were staying much more in the shadows and didn't hang out in extravagant night clubs with Busby Berkeley-style dance numbers.
For sheer boredom, I suggest the stilted and tame bedroom love scene between Hartnett and Swank. Your grandmother could watch this scene and not miss a loop in her knitting. From the glimpses we got of Swank's bod as a lady prizefighter in "Million Dollar Baby," she seems a sleek, trim and desirable young woman. But the "Black Dahlia" camera treats her as if she's a nun who just had an extra glass of elderberry wine and already regrets it. No wonder Hartnett seems less involved than he probably ought to be. If this is the best De Palma can do with a bedroom scene, he may need a little Viagra.
In contrast, De Palma gives us a pretty clear view of Hartnett's naked buttocks as he walks away from the bed and the heavy-breathing Hilary. Perhaps the director figured "Brokeback Mountain" created a new demand for such stuff, but, doggone it, I felt more than a little cheated.
If any performer makes a positive impression, it's Mia Kirshner, who plays the murder victim in several brief flashbacks. She's pretty and she's convincing and she seems right for the era and the role. I'd like to see her in bigger and better parts. She's a Canadian actress best known in the U.S. for her television roles in Showtime's lesbian drama series "The L Word" (as Jenny Schecter) and in Fox's "24" (as "Mandy.") Physically, she reminds me a lot of Jessica Harper, De Palma's youthful leading lady in his 1974 "Phantom of the Paradise."
All in all, De Palma's "The Black Dahlia" is a motion picture attrocity that displays Hollywood at its worst and does credit to practically nobody involved. It concocts a confusing solution to the real-life mystery and bores us to death doing it. Someday someone will make a first-rate movie about the mystery-clouded case of the young woman who was beaten, disemboweled, cut in half and dumped in an empty lot in Los Angeles. Believe me, folks, this isn't the one you want to see.
©2006 by Ron Miller.
The illustration is courtesy of This column first posted September
25, 2006.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
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