The Black Dahlia Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.5

The Black Dahlia Blu-ray Movie Review

The Black Dahlia case deserves a blockbuster film adapatation. This isn't that film.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 15, 2010

Does the name Elizabeth Short mean anything to you? If not, what if you were asked about her nickname, The Black Dahlia? That soubriquet has become part and parcel of American crime lore and legend, ever since Short’s mutilated body was found on a Los Angeles suburb street on a chilly January morning in 1947. The postwar era was in full swing, American confidence and consumerism was high, and though beginning its rather startling decline off the precipice created by television, the American film industry was still raking in piles of cash, as well as eager young potential starlets who wanted their share. Despite the horrors and ravages of World War II, this was still a time of rather startling innocence, looking back on it now from the vantage point of 60 plus years. And so when detectives found a body severed and disfigured, drained of its blood and with patently sexual overtones, it was the sort of shock and scandal which had not yet become daily fodder for now increasingly quaint newspapers. Though there’s some argument as to how exactly Elizabeth ended up with the moniker The Black Dahlia post-mortem, it’s obviously a play on the then popular film The Blue Dahlia, and it was such a striking nickname that today probably more people remember it than the poor murder victim’s actual name.

Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart star as the cops investigating Elizabeth Short's gruesome murder.

Over the years the unsolved murder has been the source of wild speculation and several posited theories of solution. Books about the case, both fiction and nonfiction, have cluttered the shelves, and a variety of film and television adaptations, while relatively less ubiquitous, have also seen the light of day through the years. Probably no adaptation was more feverishly anticipated than the 2006 Brian De Palma film The Black Dahlia. Based on famed crimewriter James Ellroy’s take on the case, this had the potential under De Palma’s direction to be, perhaps, a companion piece to the celebrated film adaptation of another Ellroy classic, L.A. Confidential. If De Palma and scenarist Josh Friedman (not to mention Ellroy himself in his original novel) had stuck closer to the facts at hand, as nebulous as they may be, The Black Dahlia could have been a riveting time capsule of a nation slowly emerging from postwar euphoria into the realities, and madness, of everyday life, including the birth of the modern tabloid era, when sensationalism helped define the media. Instead, with a lurid and fictional series of subplots, Elizabeth Short gets, well, short shrifted, and the film, while marginally compelling, becomes just another look at the unseemly underbelly of cops, victims and killers.

There are a number of maddening things about The Black Dahlia. First and foremost is the fact that the source material is so rife with possibilities. Elizabeth Short is a near perfect glyph of an innocent degraded by the vagaries of Hollywood and the quixotic quest for fame and fortune. Though scores of people have been named as potential suspects, and Short’s own activities in Hollywood have been the subject of rampant speculation, barely any of the actual facts, as few as may be definitively known, make it into this film. Adding insult to injury is the fascinating addendum that Ellroy himself has been obsessed with the Short murder since he was a young boy and his own mother was slain in what was probably a date rape gone horribly wrong. Shortly thereafter Ellroy was given an account of the Short murder and that killing and his mother’s slaying became inextricably linked in his young mind. That could have made a really interesting film in and of itself. Alas, De Palma and Friedman opt instead for a B-movie version of L.A. Confidential, with cops with dubious motives and call girls with even more dubious reputations.

While Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart do fine, if largely unremarkable, work as the cops, the film is filled with some of the most patently outré supporting turns in recent memory, ones that push this film solidly over the cliff into unintendedly (at least we can hope) funny camp territory. Hilary Swank is here as a supposed femme fatale, Lauren Bacall style, a Daddy’s girl in the most smarmy way imaginable, batting her eyes and trying with all her might (largely unsuccessfully, sadly) to be alluring and sinister. The most hyperbolic moments, however, surely belong squarely to the usually incredible Fiona Shaw, who here portrays a sort of Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte meets Baby Jane demented Southern belle in a performance that simply has to be seen to be believed (and not in a good way). Shaw’s climactic scene toward the film’s first (of several) denouements is surely one of the most weirdly comic moments in a supposedly grim crime film ever caught on celluloid.

De Palma often comes into considerable criticism, rightly or wrongly, for not having an original bone in his directorial body, choosing instead to ape everyone from Hitchcock to Antonioni. Here he seems to want to be L.A. Confidential’s Curtis Hanson, mixed with an almost 50s exploitation hack director like Jack Arnold. The romance between Hartnett and co-star Scarlett Johansson is about the only thing in this film that has even the semblance of reality to it, certainly not a good sign for a film that is built around one of the most sensational, and sensationalized, murders of the 20th century. Elizabeth Short remains an icon of dreams gone awry, hideously so. The Black Dahlia never attains the nightmarish ambience it’s aiming for. Instead it’s like the odd waking dream you have when you suffer from a serious bout of indigestion.

The Black Dahlia Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Black Dahlia is a curiously soft and grainy looking Blu-ray, with a VC-1 encode in 1080p and a 2.42:1 aspect ratio. The film features a lot of amber yellow photography, the sort of low sunlight that is in fact very redolent of Southern California. But that same saffron coloring gives the film an odd soft quality that makes this Blu-ray often resemble an upconverted SD-DVD. Grain is considerably apparent throughout the film, especially in the many dark moments. Midrange and close-up shots reveal an acceptable level of detail, though even here contrast isn't as striking as it might be. De Palma deliberately casts some of the film in either black and white or near sepia tones, adding to the film's retro ambience. That filtering looks quite good here, with the supposed 8mm inserts of Short appropriately grainy and soft looking. Overall, though, this isn't a huge uptick from the previously released SD-DVD.

The Black Dahlia Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track included on The Black Dahlia is, perhaps, a bit of overkill, simply because the film doesn't really exploit surround channels for much of the time. In fact when we do get some surround activity, as in Hartnett's shooting spree toward the end of the film, it's surprising and adrenaline pumping simultaneously, probably because the rest of the film is fairly resolutely front and center focused, appropriately so for the dialogue-heavy segments of the film. Ambient noises do creep in, giving a semblance of immersion, in scenes like the fight segment and, quite strikingly, the final shot of Short's body being pecked at by a crow. Fidelity is excellent throughout, with dialogue, foley effects and score very well mixed. There's just not a wealth of surround activity here to provide constant aural excitement, but what is here is handled very well.

The Black Dahlia Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Three brief, though very good, supplements are offered. Reality and Fiction: The Story of The Black Dahlia (SD; 11:10) is a superb, if way too short, overview of the crime and Ellroy's fascination with it. The Case File (SD; 20:29) is a fairly average behind-the-scenes look at the film being made. The De Palma Touch (SD; 17:00) is substantially more interesting, looking at how the director works and giving insight into his filmography as well as this particular project.

The Black Dahlia Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Black Dahlia simply strays too far from its actual source material (as opposed to the Ellroy adaptation) to be completely successful. Elizabeth Short's murder is an enduring mystery, but this film takes off on too many odd, and at times just completely bizarre, tangents to ever be anything other than a frankly humorous at times freak show.