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The Black Dahlia

post #1 of 32
12/30/06 at 11:03pm
Thread Starter 
Despite the fact that this film couldn’t find a large enough audience to avoid bottoming out, and critics were knocking each other over to take a steaming shit on it (nothing new for De Palma of course) I have to say that personally it was a great joy watching both this and ‘The Departed’ within a breath of each other. Scorsese and De Palma are both longstanding favorites of mine so while one film was undoubtedly more successful critically and at the box-office than the other, I still have to say that ‘The Black Dahlia’ gave me exactly what I wanted.

I’ve been into noir, pulp, dimestore sleaze, etc. for as long as I can remember. I recall 10-11 years old scouring the library for used books with covers that promised psychos in trenchcoats, dark alleyways, dangerous sex, and the lot; all of that stuff just fascinates me on a visceral level and I still dig to this day, scouring online bookstores for reprints and original trash fiction.

Like gialli and slasher films (though the appeal of the latter has lessened as I’ve grown older), noir often feels as if it was made just for me; I’ll have to assume that that’s mainly the reason I was predisposed to liking ‘The Black Dahlia’.
De Palma hits all of the marks that we’ve come to expect of him; the acting across the board is pretty strong (except for that short but jarring appearance by Rose McGowan who strongly insists on proving that she has absolutely no range), Josh Hartnett converted me, Aaron Eckhart and Scarlett Johansson continue to be the consummate performers, and Hilary Swank proves herself quite capable outside the realm of schmaltzy, Oscar-bait horseshit like ‘Million Dollar Baby’, she was acting with a capital ‘A’ and B-movie, femme fatale aplomb; I loved it.

I suppose I’ll go into more detail if this gets any substantial reply, but as it stands, it’s Saturday night and I need to get the fuck outside and see human faces.
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post #2 of 32
12/30/06 at 11:15pm
I need to see this on DVD before making up my mind about it, as a fan of both noir and James Ellroy, I thought I would have loved this, but I left the theatre unsure of whether I liked it or not.

However, I thought Mia Kirshner delivered an absolutely fantastic performance, especially when you consider she's only in the movie in flashbacks and found footage. It's the most important role in the film, and boy did she ever pull it off. If the movie had done better, she'd get an Academy Award nomination.
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post #3 of 32
12/31/06 at 9:55pm
This is one of the most depressingly misfires of the year. DePalma channeling Ellroy, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett, hell, I'm even a Josh Hartnett fan. But as it stands, it's ploddingly slow, unfocused, and the source of the most embarassing unintentional laughter I experienced in theaters this year. They also manage to make a convoluted clusterfuck of a relatively uncomplicated mystery. And finally, one of the most important subplots is based on the fact that the Dahlia and Swank look alike, which couldn't be further from the truth. It sucks the air out of the film's main character arc.

If a year's "Worst" list is supposed to be composed of films that should have been good but crashed and burned, this one deserves a slot.
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post #4 of 32
12/31/06 at 10:11pm
I had mixed feelings on first viewing. There are obviously sequences that are well put together (c'mon, the death over the staircase is great set piece, and Mia Kirshner is heartbreaking), but it felt talky and slow, and not all there on first pass. But being a De Palma fan, I revisited with the DVD, and everything fell into place. This gets at Elroy's heart more than any other adaptation, his obsessions, and the mournful sense that Hollywood turns everyone into whores. Everyone's dirty, it's just a matter of choosing what dirt you can live with, while all the protagonists (save Kay) are haunted by a dead girl. For those who found KD Lang jarring, one second pass that she is singing "Love for Sale" (not the Talking Heads version) really clicks.

Also, even on first viewing, Harnett tossing the ice pack into the furnace is pretty great.
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post #5 of 32
12/31/06 at 10:23pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stew
And finally, one of the most important subplots is based on the fact that the Dahlia and Swank look alike, which couldn't be further from the truth. It sucks the air out of the film's main character arc.
This is a sin that I was able to forgive pretty quickly, even if it was a bit silly. De Palma wanted to cast the actors he felt best suited their respective roles, and he asks his audience to suspend disbelief, I can deal with that.
I'd also have to give the tip of the hat to Kirshner, for my money she provided an astonishing level of reality and honesty to a higly stylized world; she should be a star by now.
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post #6 of 32
12/31/06 at 11:18pm
On second go that bothered me less. You can see it a little. I think it bothered me less on second viewing because Bucky going to Madeline doesn't have as much to do with Short as it does the choice between what "whore" he's going to choose to be with, and once he gets to know Kay's story, he figures he'll be with the one with money, not realizing Madeline's other motives for keeping him around. Also, Bucky's never the obsessive about Short as Lee is, so...
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post #7 of 32
1/1/07 at 12:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andre Dellamorte
This gets at Elroy's heart more than any other adaptation, his obsessions, and the mournful sense that Hollywood turns everyone into whores. Everyone's dirty, it's just a matter of choosing what dirt you can live with, while all the protagonists (save Kay) are haunted by a dead girl.
I agree with this, sort of. I'm an Ellroy fan, and I thought DePalma did do a better job than Curtis Hanson (which is saying something, L.A. Confidential is my favorite movie ever) at capturing the bleakness of Ellroy's text and Ellroy's L.A., which has always seemed to me as operating in its own universe just slightly removed from our own.

I remembered the thing that bothered me most about the movie, though, was the way they deviated from the ending of the book--Bucky killing Madeline instead of arresting her and Madeline later getting off. At the time, I felt it was kind of "Hollywood," especially when you consider one of the reasons Ellroy's stuff is so bleak is that the bad guys are almost never punished/get away with it--which is funny, because the same deviation from the ending I bought in L.A. Confidential, and had a hard time with here.
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post #8 of 32
1/1/07 at 12:59am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by RathBandu
I remembered the thing that bothered me most about the movie, though, was the way they deviated from the ending of the book--Bucky killing Madeline instead of arresting her and Madeline later getting off. At the time, I felt it was kind of "Hollywood," especially when you consider one of the reasons Ellroy's stuff is so bleak is that the bad guys are almost never punished/get away with it--which is funny, because the same deviation from the ending I bought in L.A. Confidential, and had a hard time with here.
This instantly reminded me of the controversial (for 1947) ending to the first Mike Hammer book, "I, The Jury". Nothing startlingly new as far as noir goes, but it was a very Spillane-like move just the same.
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post #9 of 32
1/1/07 at 3:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JacknifeJohnny
This is a sin that I was able to forgive pretty quickly, even if it was a bit silly. De Palma wanted to cast the actors he felt best suited their respective roles, and he asks his audience to suspend disbelief, I can deal with that.
Suspension of disbelief is accepting that in the universe of Superman, a man can fly. Or that, in movie logic, maybe they really can drill into an asteroid and detonate it with a nuke. Hinging one of your main subplots on that fact that Mia Kirshner and Hillary Swank are doppelgangers that people keep mistaking for each other took me out of the film every time a character refered to it. That and the fact that, for a mystery, the identity of the shadowy, knife-weilding assassin is painfully and obviously Hillary Swank.
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post #10 of 32
1/1/07 at 5:39pm
I think this dude sums up the movie better than anyone else I've seen.

Cinema of the Absurd - The Black Dahlia
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post #11 of 32
1/1/07 at 6:00pm
I prefer this take
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post #12 of 32
1/12/07 at 6:10am
What a frustrarting movie...it was well-shot, well-enough acted and the plot was solid for the first half then just sprials into convoluted nonsense. I love noir as a genre and was impressed with Hartnett, but Mia Kirshner and Hilary Swank look nothing at all alike which frankly was off-putting and Blanchard's spiral into insanity...just didn't ring true, it was too quick, too sudden.

All in all, I am mmost likely going to pick up the book at some point, but the film just fails to connect. However, for all its failings, it fails well...so even if it sounds like I'm being harsh, this would still rank about a 6.5-7/10 for me.
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post #13 of 32
1/12/07 at 6:26am
What a frustrarting movie...it was well-shot, well-enough acted and the plot was solid for the first half then just sprials into convoluted nonsense. I love noir as a genre and was impressed with Hartnett, but Mia Kirshner and Hilary Swank look nothing at all alike which frankly was off-putting and Blanchard's spiral into insanity...just didn't ring true, it was too quick, too sudden.

All in all, I am mmost likely going to pick up the book at some point, but the film just fails to connect. However, for all its failings, it fails well...so even if it sounds like I'm being harsh, this would still rank about a 6.5-7/10 for me.
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post #14 of 32
1/13/07 at 3:36am
Pick up the book for sure. Ellroy is great, and Dahlia is a great way to get into his stuff.
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post #15 of 32
1/13/07 at 3:45am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc Wrz
Blanchard's spiral into insanity...just didn't ring true, it was too quick, too sudden.
The movie doesn't spell this out and it seems abrupt, but Blanchard feels guilt about what he's just done, mixed with his protection complex that Kay talks about. Also, either guilt or the Dahlia's made him a speed freak. But the main thing is the film can't tell us what Blanchard did was bad until Bucky figures it out. That's another thing that smoothes out on a repeat viewing.
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post #16 of 32
1/13/07 at 1:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Andre Dellamorte
The movie doesn't spell this out and it seems abrupt, but Blanchard feels guilt about what he's just done, mixed with his protection complex that Kay talks about. Also, either guilt or the Dahlia's made him a speed freak. But the main thing is the film can't tell us what Blanchard did was bad until Bucky figures it out. That's another thing that smoothes out on a repeat viewing.
Though one of the problems I had with the flick is that it is was pretty obvious as the shootout is going on that Bucky shoots first.
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post #17 of 32
1/13/07 at 6:06pm
You would mean Lee (Blanchard/Aaron Eckhart) not Bucky (Josh Harnett). The film is told from Bucky's POV and he feels that Lee saved him. It isn't until later he realizes he's been lied to. Also, the way the scene is staged, the first bullet comes at Bucky, so... if you felt the situation was a bit hinky, well, then that's foreshadowing.
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post #18 of 32
1/13/07 at 7:54pm
Did you hear that the orignal version was like 3 hours long tell the studio made De Palma edit it down?
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post #19 of 32
1/14/07 at 12:01pm
Apparantly Ellroy was a big fan of the original version but not of the version released. I'm not sure of the differences there though as IMDB doesn't list anything. DePalma also offered the Swank role to Eva Green first of all, which I think would've made things a lot easier to swallow.

Does anyone know if this was the same script that David Fincher was going to direct?
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post #20 of 32
1/14/07 at 5:18pm
Where are you getting this three hour cut info?
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post #21 of 32
1/14/07 at 5:50pm
I'd read the Ellroy thing from an article I found. If I can dig it up again I'll link to it. Ellroy though apparantly spoke very positively of an early cut of the film he saw and later said he preferred it to the film that was released.

I don't know about the running time. Though apparantly the Fincher version was rumoured to be 3 hours and in Black and White, though again, I don't know where the running time could've come from seeing as the film was only in pre-production (With Mark Whalberg attatched as Lee).

I don't really think this does a dis-service to the novel. It needs to streamline things somewhat, so obviously the whole Mexican subplot is the first thing to go. To be honest I'm suprised they even kept what they did. It doesn't feature any major changes like 'LA Confidential' did. Well apart from the Maddie thing.

I still have one problem with them both though, and thats with having the Sprague/whatever they're called in the film, name show up at the end of the stag movie. It just seems such a giant plot flaw, and is just a way for Bucky to be set on the right path.

It's not a bad Ellroy adaptation though. But for whatever reason it just doesn't quite work as well as it should.
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post #22 of 32
1/14/07 at 6:11pm
The name at the end of the film is from The Man Who Laughs, not the stag film. since both are intercut to show Bucky's realization. I would love to see that article.
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post #23 of 32
1/14/07 at 6:17pm
No problem, I'll see if I can find it again. I'm only just getting into Ellroy and the BD was the first of his I read. I found the article while looking for stuff online. I'm sure Google will do me a service though.

I'm sure the book has Sprague's name somehow show on the film. Which is weird as I only finished it like last week. I'm sure I've got it wrong though.

EDIT: Oddly enough his Wiki page touches upon it....

Quote:
Ellroy was disappointed by the film "Cop" (starring James Woods) as an adaptation of one of his novels. He was then astonished by Curtis Hanson's depiction of his novel L.A. Confidential. On a making of piece on the L.A. Confidential DVD, he says that Hanson and Brian Helgeland, the film's screenwriters, "brilliantly adapted" his book and that he was "flabberghasted" by what was done with it. Prior to viewing the completed film of The Black Dahlia (based on his book of the same name) he had praised it as a brilliantly depicted film after watching hours of unedited footage of the film. Ultimately, nearly an hour of the three-hour film, which linked events and facts together, was cut from the final version.
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post #24 of 32
9/23/07 at 8:31pm
I'm a fan of DePalma, a fan of old skool Noir, and am developing a rabid appreciation for Ellroy (just pretty much devoured Brown's Requiem) and yet I can't stand this film at all.

I just caught it playing on TV and thought I'd give it a go and I was just really kinda disappointed. The first half hour is fantastic, and I was actually awed by some of DePalma's camerawork, but the third act is just so bizarre and out there that I actually thought it was turning into a parody.

The film doesn't so much go off the rails as take the wrong connection and plummet into the centre of Crazyville. The increasingly melodramatic acting and editing get to the point where it's laughable (The staggered editing as Kay appears outside Madeline's house springs to mind). I can understand why certain choices are made, but everything feels too wishy washy, we're expected to make leaps based on cinematic cliche rather than what's presented in the film and the last fifteen are just unintentionally hilarious.
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post #25 of 32
9/25/07 at 8:01am
I don't understand why so little of the blame is heaped on Hartnett. What an utter void of personality the guy is.
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post #26 of 32
10/11/07 at 2:14am
Just finished watching this for the first time, and I'm still processing a bit....

But you're right...I wanted to like Hartnett, but it was like he was acting like someone out of a noir film. There was no sense of weight with him for some reason. It wasn't a bad performance, but it wasn't the performance or the performer the role needed.

I can see this is a movie I'll need to revisit a time or two in order to work my way through the details, though. I'll likely have this thread nearby when I do, because there's still some issues I'm having with the thing. The wonky third act is part of it, I guess.

I've never read any of Ellroy's books, so I'm forced to take what they give me in the film. And maybe that hour that was cut would have been what I needed here. The idea that Short and Madeline looked alike didn't bother me too much, though. I got the sense that it was a similarity of "type" more than face. Maybe I'm reading it wrong.

Blanchard's descent into obsession did seem awfully abrupt. Yeah, "white knight" syndrome and all, but give me a hint before you lower the boom.

I don't know...I guess I need to watch it a few more times and look closer.
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post #27 of 32
10/11/07 at 10:53am
The movie itself is visually stunning: It's beautiful to watch, absolutely great cinematography which is sadly overshadowed by the overly convoluted, bordering nonsensical plot, or rather the way it was presented as it's easier to understand it in the book, I heard.
The head explosion and that old woman's suicide scenes were awesome. though.
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post #28 of 32
2/17/08 at 10:11am
I don't understand how Mia Kirshner has been unable to snag one decent subsequent film role off of this.
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post #29 of 32
2/17/08 at 2:50pm
"The Black Dahlia" was 2006's "From Hell" ... another Hollywood bastardization of a great, great story.
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post #30 of 32
2/17/08 at 8:19pm
This is the type of movie that makes book adaptations so frustrating for me. You know, the type where you recommend it beforehand to pretty much everyone and then have to go apologising to them and swearing that the book's actually great, while they look at you incredulously.
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post #31 of 32
2/23/08 at 6:04am
Interesting misfire. DePalma follows his own muse and I love him for it, even if I don't always love his films. I thought the mom was awesome in a hilariously campy way. And Mia Kirshner's tragic Betty Short is perfectly not-campy. She anchors the movie. Something about the casting overall though just seems off though. As if Hartnett, Scarlett and Swank wandered in from some other film. (Looking back, the Eva Green rumor makes a ton of sense.)

And there's too much music. I know DePalma is going for that retro feel, but there's only so much of the old tricks that can still work recontextualized. Wall to wall orchestration is not one of them.
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post #32 of 32
2/9/10 at 12:03am
I thought it would be hard for me not to like this film, but I was so wrong. Josh Hartnett just doesn't have the chops to carry a film like noir needs. Did anyone else find his character kind of prudish? I had a harder time suspending my disbelief for his disgust with the women than Hilary Swank as a look-alike. But I guess I prefer my noir-protagonists much more hard-boiled. As previously stated, Mia Kershner, is probably the highlight in this film. She is just so haunting in the audition reels; I could see where the obsession is supposed to come from. Whether or not I was sold on Aaron Eckhart's obsession is another story. It was just way too abrupt, I would have preferred a lot more development.
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