The Black Dahlia

In your search for answers to the meaning of life, if one of your questions has ever been, "Who would bring a baby to an R-rated movie?", you should have been with me when I went to see The Black Dahlia one Sunday this past summer. I kid you not, some lady had brought her baby with her to the theater. Why, I don't know. Perhaps she couldn't find a babysitter, or perhaps she wanted to expose her child to the noir genre early in life. Either way, I was very happy when she left the theater.

Anyway, when it came out, I was interested in seeing The Black Dahlia because it was adapted from a James Ellroy novel. James Ellroy has published many noir crime novels in the '80s and '90s, most notably L.A. Confidential, and has a series commonly known as "The L.A. Quartet"—four crime novels that take place in L.A., spanning from 1947 to roughly 1958. The Black Dahlia is the first in that series, and L.A. Confidential is the third. L.A. Confidential was spectacularly filmed in 1997, and thus served as the inevitable precedent for The Black Dahlia. That said, I fully expected The Black Dahlia to be a supremely interwoven, complicated plot—and it was. The only problem, though, was that relationships between characters and events were tenuous at best, never fully explained, relying on too many jumps in logic (and faith!) to connect them all together. I can't remember where I heard this, but it was explained to me once that about half an hour's content was cut from the film—content that would have perfectly summed things up more, and leave the plot feeling more solid and less like it was Band-Aided together.

The casting choices were rather questionable, too, but I'll get into that later. The story of The Black Dahlia is basically this. Bucky Bleichert (as played by Josh Hartnett) and Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart) are both L.A. cops who box, and are pitted against each other in an exhibition match called "Fire and Ice" (because one is nicknamed Mr. Fire, the other Mr. Ice—sort of like how Sylvester Stallone was "The Italian Stallion" in Rocky) where proceeds went to the local police department. Bucky and Lee subsequently become partners on the force, and that's when we meet Lee's femme fatale girlfriend, Kay (played by Chesty LaRue Scarlett Johansson). The three become very tight friends, and some sexual tension begins to grow between Bucky and Kay, but it doesn't come to fruition (at least not immediately; though when it does, it's so laughably bad that all I wanted to say was, "Aww, you just ruined a perfectly good dinner!").

Then one day, Bucky and Lee end up in a shootout where they're the only survivors—and just behind the house where the shootout took place, someone finds the body of a young girl. Though it ain't just any body: it's been cut in half and slashed all to hell. The girl gets identified as Elizabeth Short, an aspiring young actress who hasn't had her big break yet, but who does have a reputation with the guys. Somehow the name "Black Dahlia" gets associated with her case (the movie doesn't really explain how), and Bucky goes off to investigate her murder, because Lee and Kay have problems of their own in the meantime. (A shady character from Kay's past is just getting out of jail, and that's given them both much pause.)

But as Bucky begins to investigate Elizabeth Short, he uncovers a lot of scandalous tidbits from her past, most notably her frequenting lesbian bars and performing in lesbian videos (which I'm sure were considered terribly scandalous in the late '40s). Along the way, he meets Madeline, as played by Hilary Swank, who's supposed to bear a remarkable resemblance to Elizabeth Short. She comes from a wealthy yet bizarre family (her mother, played by Fiona Shaw, totally stole the show during their dinner scene), and she and Bucky predictably begin to knock boots. With all this in mind, you'd think we have the recipe for a fine noir thriller . . . but sadly, we don't. The '40s noir feel was very strong, but it wasn't strong enough to keep The Black Dahlia above water. Chinatown this ain't, though the influence is very notable.

A month or so after seeing the movie, I finally broke down and got the book from the Arlington Library (a beat-up copy of a book, I must say; damn thing looked like it would fall apart if the wind changed direction). After seeing the movie, I glanced at the afterword that Ellroy wrote for the paperback reissue, and he made the statement that The Black Dahlia was his signature novel; I can only imagine the disappointment and embarrassment he must have felt at his signature novel being so badly adapted like this. But as is always the case, the book was light years better than the movie. It was actually a good bit darker than the movie, and so much of the material in the movie was lifted straight from the book. So that left me to wonder . . . what exactly got lost in translation? The movie stayed pretty true to the book, though with some noticeable liberties being taken! For example, Lee Blanchard came to a different end in the book—and to be honest, I think I preferred his movie death rather than his book death, because in the book it was more tangential, less to do with the plot. The character of Madeline also had a different end between book and movie (not to mention a different last name). And the shootout right before the discover of Elizabeth Short's body was very different. So again, what went wrong?

I’d have to start with the casting, because Josh Harnett was rather unengaging as Bucky Bleichert. He seemed so wooden, so lifeless on screen that he didn't elicit any sympathy from me as the viewer. I'm not exactly a fan of Aaron Eckhart, but after reading the book, he seemed to stay pretty true to the original character of Lee—always the hothead, always playing an angle, always doped up, never showing what his true intentions are. I could easily condemn Eckhart's acting, but maybe Lee just wasn't supposed to be a likeable character. As to Scarlett Johansson? Best not to get me started on her, for she's had better acting days (like Lost in Translation). Hilary Swank I'm really undecided on. I have to give her credit for Boys Don't Cry, but I didn't see what the big deal was with Million Dollar Baby (her two Oscar wins). Though I did enjoy her in Insomnia, because she played a very well-drawn character there. Here in The Black Dahlia . . . it's hard to say. It seemed to me like she didn't quite understand the character of Madeline, and thus didn't know how to play her.

I'll give the movie 5 out of 10. The noir, period style worked very well, I thought, but the acting, casting, and editing left lots to be desired. The book itself, that I'd give a 9 out of 10.

On a separate but related note, right now I'm reading the second book of the L.A. Quartet, The Big Nowhere, which is about the Communist scare in Hollywood in the earliest days of 1950, and I have to admit, it's hard to get into this book. I'm about two-thirds of the way in, and it still hasn't gripped me like The Black Dahlia did. But I look forward to reading L.A. Confidential, which was a rousing success when translated to the big-screen, and as a novel, appears to be very epic in scope. It's just a shame, though, that a good book like The Black Dahlia couldn't translate as well as its predecessor to the big screen.