Maybe it's just me, but how could one NOT laugh at the over-the-top performances in such previous Brian De Palma films as SCARFACE and DRESSED TO KILL. This film, however, has to be one of De Palma's biggest misfires since BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES. First of all, forget even a semi-factual account of the real Black Dahlia killing. I have not read the Ellroy novel on which THE BLACK DAHLIA is based, so I can't comment on the adaptation. All I can say is that while this film features amazing 1940s production design and striking camera work, the script is one cliché after another and the dialogue is full of anachronisms. Is that supposed to be cute or "ironic"? And the performances are so over-the-top that the audience laughed at a number of scenes. Even such usually subtle and nuanced performers as Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank chew the scenery and make wild grotesque faces into the camera as wildly as later Orson Welles or later Richard Burton or later Cameron Mitchell at their most extreme. As a director, Welles can get this to work in his films such as LADY FROM SHANGHAI or MISTER ARKADIN or TOUCH OF EVIL because despite the excess there is still a sense of the unknown and the terrifying. In BLACK DAHLIA, it's just hammy acting. If I wanted to see this kind of thing, I'd rent WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE. The plot is nonsensical and has no relation to the real world--and during the last fifteen minutes we keep getting new resolutions to the murder that are even more outlandish than the last one. If De Palma intends this as a send-up of the L.A. noir genre, then he achieved what he set out to do. THE BLACK DAHLIA looks good on a big screen, if you can forget the plot and dialogue. If you are thinking of renting this, watch CHINATOWN again...or better yet, watch HOLLYWOODLAND. How does De Palma get financing for these projects??? If you want to see a crime film where almost every character plays it like Glenn Anders in LADY FROM SHANGHAI (a little "target practice"), this is your film. Whatever critic called this a "shrieking camp-fest" was totally on the mark.
Review of The Black Dahlia
