| Issue #27, September 29, 2006 |
Guy de Fraumeni’s Hollywood In The Hamptons
The Black Dahlia
ILike a $20 per day plus expenses, gumshoe tailing a guilty-as-sin accomplice into troubled, shadowy places marinated in blood, the current movie version of The Black Dahlia follows stickily on the heels of another L.A. mystery of a troubled soul, Hollywoodland. Whereas Superman’s death was brought to life by grand performances, The Black Dahlia is killed by wrong performances, and mis-directed by Brian De Palma (color-flushed director of Dressed to Kill, Scarface, Carrie, etc.), to the floridly lurid Black Dahlia story what the killer did to the black-haired young woman whose death is the subject of this film: he bisected it, disemboweled it, drained all the blood and after stripping it naked of any dignity, cut a senseless grin on its face.
This true crime drama was adapted from a James Ellroy novel, one of his “L.A. Quartet” that included L.A. Confidential (see the swell 1977 movie). This one was provoked in part by his mother’s murder, which took place when he was 10 years young. She too had been thrown away like trash. This is strong inspiration, and makes the disappointment of De Palma’s Dahlia all the greater. The ghastly event occurred in 1947 and the costumes and vintage auto providers do okay, but considering that a lot of the film was shot in Bulgaria, it’s no wonder there’s a detached feeling to it and so much of it is so wrong like, the movie shows the entire Hollywoodland sign, even though “land” was removed in 1945.
The discovery of the corpse (corpses? She was in two pieces) intrigued two L.A. detectives, played by Josh Harnett and Aaron Eckhart, two close friends who have boxed their way up together and now share Eckhart’s bleach-blonde lady, Scarlett Johansson, who seems to be recovering pretty well from Woody Allen’s poopy, Scoop. Harnett and Eckhart are wet-behind-the-ears film noir heroes, and their ménage a trois affair is as soggy as a dishrag. However, their fascination with the surgically mutilated corpse approaches a necrophiliatic obsession. Ms. Johansson nicely fills the pale, lush–red lipsticked skin of her noirish femme fatale. She treats Eckhart like a bum and his best friend Hartnett like Clark Gable. Perhaps that’s why Eckhart becomes especially fixated on The Black Dahlia. But fellas, Scarlett is not exactly chopped liver like Dahlia.
It’s found that “Black Dahlia” was an innocent who came to Hollywood to make it big, only to find little dirty people who wanted a piece of her, until all that was left was sensational litter in an empty lot. The young dark starlet had many “auditions,” but no real roles. She was sultry/sexy-looking and we primarily see her as the police did, in a series of “screen test” bits of motion picture film. The vulnerability of her sullied psyche is well-played with desperation by Mia Kirshner. The voice of the director on the track is De Palma, himself, doing a sort of “Hitchcock” cameo – whose influence and copycat stigma has plagued De Palma. A high directorial moment is the discovery of the body parts by a woman with a baby carriage. In a tracking, over-the-roof shot the woman stops as she sees something like a broken mannequin then breaks into a mad dash, screaming. It is “Hitchcockian” and De Palma at his best.
James Ellroy’s novel is driven by an angry madness and the investigation, after many dead ends, uncovers the perverse and degenerate aristocratic daughter of a thoroughly nutty family – steamily done by Hilary Swank, giving us one grandly entertaining performance. Sin pours from her accented-with-snobbery mouth, but matched with Harnett – they shouldn’t send a boy to do a man’s job. If Mr. De Palma were not such a veteran of the Hollywood Win Some/Lose Some Wars, I’d give up on him. He does manage to make a comeback movie every 10 years, but this ain’t it. His Dahlia has too much sinister contriving up dark alleys that doesn’t go anywhere, and oh, so many femmes fatales going and coming from too many lesbian bars. Except for a few good moments, this version of the City of Angel’s evil devilry does not bear comparison to the many others that have been there and done that. You might go way back to the origins of film noir, like Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, directed by Howard Hawks in 1945. It’s all there: the detective enmeshed in murder and romance, the wealthy decadent family, the young woman swooning into porn, and decaying corpses with the stench of irredeemable spiritual corruption that rises from them like a halo.
Glamorous Hollywood percolates it all.
Guy-Jean de Fraumeni is the producer/writer/director of award-winning European and American feature films. He has been a judge at Major Film and TV award competitions, including the Oscars, the Emmy’s and various film festivals. Sarah Halsey assists him.
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