Just released on DVD, the Black Dahlia was widely criticised and examined as a film. Partly because of the promise of its director Brian de Palma, director of such notable films as Scarface, and partly because of the charisma of its leads, particularly its female leads and partly because of a longing for someone to repeat the success of LA Confidential and give modern film goers something of a sense of the sophistication and style that their parents and grand parents enjoyed in the classic era of forties noirs, the Black Dahlia got a drubbing from the critics.

The Black Dahlia is a failure as a film but it is a glorious failure. This is not a noir that can stand company with such classics as the Big Sleep or Laura, but it has the right look, the right aspect as a picture, the right style. I suppose the real question of this review is what went wrong- why was De Palma unable to update the classic mystery of Elizabeth Short's murder, the classic themes of Hollywood corruption, sexual deviancy and private police work and the classic genre of Film Noir into the twenty first century.

The thing about this film is it functions much more neatly as a series of stills than as a film. Particularly this is apt for Scarlett Johansson's character- quite what function she has within the film is not clear, she serves as a kind of romantic interest, a good girl who is playing with the emotions of two cops and may have been involved in earlier disreputable activities.

But her look is wonderful- she may not capture much in a performance that seeps sometimes into the melodramatic but the way she seizes the camera, early in the film, and fixes it with her eyes and pose, sets the style of the film. Johansson is able to exploit her natural beauty and her natural charisma to fix images in the mind which are as iconic in their way as the classic Bacall sneer.

The problem is that unlike Bacall in the Big Sleep, Johansson is given no more space than a series of delicious stills will allow. Her look is immortal but her character is not.

That sums up so much of this film though, that it begins to make one wonder about the intention of the film maker. De Palma's films have often been fixated on style, Scarface is a great stylistic classic but unlike Scarface, this film lacks the depth and script to back up the formidable style that De Palma conjures up.

Largely that is because he misses some of the points of noir. Humanity in these films is something that is revealed in moments of weakness alone- the word play and the grim surroundings make explosions of melodramatic emotion seem implausible. The greatest moments in Film Noir are those of repressed emotion- think of John Garfield lustily surveying Lana Turner's legs in A Postman always Rings Twice. Similarly with sexuality, Film Noir is abrim with sexuality, but not with sex. This film is abrim with sex, there is copious amounts of it, there isn't even the repression that LA Confidential managed- there is too much release, bloody, emotional or sweaty for the viewer truly to become encased in a world of suspision and fear. In some ways the director of Scarface, a film which derives its impact from a bloodstained look, is precisely the wrong man to handle this material which needs a more subtle restrained hand.

Ultimately the story needs it- the script is what in the end must be the determinant of how a film is shot. We deal here with a murder investigation and with the psychological break up of the cops doing the investigation- but the film is not tight to its subject. Too many distractions, fleshy or bloody, compromise the integrity of the storyline. You get the feeling the film needed an editor to trim it down. So consequently, unlike the great noirs, the plot feels unwieldy. The atmosphere doesn't hold around the cops and consequently doesn't work.

That's reflected in the parts of the film which are impressive- as I've said its the stills from Black Dahlia that after many months I can still remember. Hartnett entering a Lesbian Club in Hollywood for instance stays in my mind though none of his conversation in there does, Johansson's pure beauty holding the cigarrette lighter.


Its interesting that the opinion of critics seems to echo this view- most of them find the most impressive performance to have been that of Mia Kirschner, on screen for a matter of minutes who plays the murder victim. The key about Kirschner is that her performance is all stills, she says a line, vanishes, she is in a picture and goes quickly. She has little concentrated time on screen and that that she does have seems episodic and not continuous- she gives a good performance but it ressembles Johansson's performance, in that what she does is crafts a character out of segments of camera time.


The most damaging part of the film comes in its resolution. As I've argued, what we are presented with in the Black Dahlia, is a series of a amazing images, one by one they flash through your mind. The ending which focuses in on a minor performance and yet very overacted performance from Fiona Shaw, is dissapointing partly because it seeks to give the film a meaning which the rest of the film belies. The film almost ends up seeking to be a mere murder mystery despite the fact that really its about the unravelling of characters and friendships. Partly the end of the film is a failure because again its too histronic, its too emotionally resolved- the best noir films, the best stories of this type which seek a certain realism, can't be ressolved.

One wonders if in a sense what happened in the Black Dahlia is that a director of gangster films tried to direct a more complex psychological drama. Film Noir is separate from gangster films, its much more community focused and much less is resolved in the end. The characters have to keep on their masks because otherwise they are revealed in all their naked weakness. This is a story filled with the scent of film noir, its a story of a complex murder case and how it impacted upon the cops and their relatives involved. The simplicity of the resolution, the ease with which characters drop their guard and their lack of complexity are straining against the dynamic of the script. In many ways the director and the story are in direct competition.

Its difficult to get to the essense of why this film doesn't work, and this review hasn't really succeeded in doing that, it is a film worth watching as much to see what doesn't work as what does. There are as I hope I've made clear interesting questions, stylish if not good performances, and at least the first half has a nice intensity. Overall it fails to maintain that intensity, fails to maintain psychological integrity, is muddled in the questions it asks and too quickly dismisses or fails to answer, but its a failure with merit.