6.9 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
When Johnny (Alan Ladd) comes home from the navy he finds his wife Helen kissing her substitute boyfriend Eddie, the owner of the Blue Dahlia nightclub. Helen admits her drunkenness caused their son's death. He pulls a gun on her but decides she's not worth it. Later, Helen is found dead and Johnny is the prime suspect.
Starring: Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, William Bendix, Howard Da Silva, Doris DowlingFilm-Noir | 100% |
Drama | 37% |
Mystery | 5% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Thriller | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The opening scene of The Blue Dahlia (1946) shows naval lieutenant and flyer Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd) and two of his service buddies get off a bus in downtown Los Angeles. Johnny, Buzz Wanchek (William Bendix), and George Copeland (Hugh Beaumont) have recently returned from service in the South Pacific. (Johnny flew 112 missions.) After the trio enter a cafe to have drinks, a marine corporal (Anthony Caruso) begins playing swing music on a jukebox. Buzz, who has steel plate in his head from a bullet shell, can't stand the sound and asks the corporal to switch it off. When the man doesn't, Buzz pulls the plug which causes a fistfight. After getting punched, the corporal learns that Buzz is also a veteran. He forgives him for reacting in a shaken kind of way. Hearing loud music through hotel walls also provokes Buzz to ask the tenants to shut their music off. These scenes parallel the PTSD symptoms experienced by the characters played by Fredric March, Dana Andrews, and Harold Russell in William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives, which was also released the same year. Indeed, a scene depicting Andrews's Fred Derry in a service job where he's greatly irritated by another man's comments and gets in a quarrel has the same (if not more) resonance than the one at the beginning of The Blue Dahlia.
While Johnny doesn't encounter the same aftereffects from the war as Buzz, he has problems of his own to deal with at home. When he arrives at a cocktail party to see his wife, Helen Morrison (Doris Dowling), he notices she's with another man. As Helen is about to say goodbye to Eddie Harwood (Howard da Silva), Johnny catches them close together at the doorway. He punches Eddie for kissing his spouse, who's turned into a floozy. Johnny grows angrier when Helen informs him that they've lost their young son, who died in car accident. Before departing her quarters, Johnny leaves his naval .45, perhaps for someone to bump her off? Waking alone in the rainy night fifty miles away from his wife, Johnny is picked up by Joyce Harwood (Veronica Lake). She takes an instant liking to him but Johnny is a bit uncertain about his feelings for her. Joyce is separated from her husband Eddie, who owns the Blue Dahlia Cafe and nightclub. On the morning after Johnny and Joyce's car ride, it's announced on radio that Helen was found dead. Johnny is one of the prime suspects. Will he try to leave town?
Drive on a rainy night.
Shout Select's release of The Blue Dahlia comes with an MPEG-4 AVC-encoded transfer that fits on a BD-50. The picture appears in Academy ratio of about 1.37:1. This seems to be the same 2K restoration that Arrow Films used for its release five years ago. The grayscale and black levels demonstrate excellent delineation during the outdoor scenes shot at night. The print doesn't show off any bad damage marks. Light scratches (e.g., see the one on the side of Eddie's forehead in Screenshot #20), flecks, and very thin tramlines creep in from time to time. Though there isn't too noticeable of a telecine wobble, the frame is sometimes a bit shifty. I also observed some image flickering. This has more to do with the elements that Shout were given. Shout has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 25000 kbps. My video score is 3.75/5.00.
Shout provides a dozen chapters for the 99-minute film.
Shout supplies a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (1563 kbps, 24-bit) as the sole sound track. The mix on the lower register of the aural spectrum but sufficiently picks up spoken words. The street-smart vernacular and slang that Chandler wrote in takes some time for the ears to get used to.
Reviewing The Blue Dahlia in 1946, Gilbert Kanour of The Evening Sun (NY) commented on some of these qualities: "Mr. Chandler's dialogue is often the speech that conceivably might be spoken under the circumstances and not a lot of odd sounds only slightly resembling conversation. But the tonic outcome is due as much to manner as to matter..." I heard some background hiss and a little buzz on the center channel. It's not terribly distracting since one only notices it in patches. I appreciated the main title theme that Victor Young wrote but the sound track doesn't really have a non-diegetic score once the opening credits conclude.
Optional English SDH (in a yellow font) can be switched on through the menu or via remote.
The Blue Dahlia is an outstanding postwar noir that's arguably the finest collaboration between Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. There isn't a dull performance. Raymond Chandler's gripping story keeps the viewer focused on the mystery all the way through. Shout Select has delivered a very good transfer and lossless mono mix, which showing the obvious source-related limitations from the original Western Electric recording. The commentary track with two noir experts is unique to this package. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to fans of Chandler, Ladd, and Lake.
1942
Warner Archive Collection
1947
1942
1996
Hot Spot
1941
1944
1955
1954
Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1950
Includes They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! and The Organization on standard BD
1967
1957
Warner Archive Collection
1944
1955
Warner Archive Collection
1947
1949
Warner Archive Collection
1953
1946
1946
Encore Edition | Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1953
4K Restoration
1948