The last De Palma film I wrote about, Snake Eyes (1998), received a critical drubbing on release, but in retrospect it’s a marvelous mess that should be a cult classic. The Black Dahlia (2006) also was much panned—and, while it’s a mess, I can’t say it’s a marvelous one. De Palma should be the perfect choice to helm a seedy neo-noir, but the script meanders, and the director ends up turning a story of greed, lust, and betrayal into an exercise in tedious moralism.
For De Palma fans, everything seems like it should be in place for one of his better efforts. The story’s centered on a love triangle between charismatic hero cop Lee (Aaron Eckhart), his serious would-be do-gooder partner Bucky (Josh Hartnett) and Lee’s smart, sultry girlfriend Kay (Scarlett Johansson). Bucky thinks their relationship is all friendship and mutual support, but it soon turns out Lee is a thin façade over a whole pit of squirming secrets. When Lee becomes obsessed with the gruesome murder of sex worker Elizabeth Short (Mia Kirshner), everything starts to unravel—especially when Bucky becomes involved with Elizabeth’s look-alike (and former lover), the wealthy Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank.)
Seduction, doubling, and sexual secrets are all in De Palma’s wheelhouse. The problems, though, start with the casting; Lee is supposed to be a fascinating and charming figure; otherwise why would the intense Bucky be so dazzled by him? But Eckhart comes across as a transparent asshole doofus from the first moment he’s on screen. He isn’t helped by the script either, which doesn’t give him a lot to do on camera. Hartnett and Johansson are much more magnetic presences, and have more chemistry with each other than either does with Eckhart’s Lee—yet their mutual fascination with Lee is supposed to be the thematic core of the film. As a result, you spend most of the runtime asking the movie in exasperation, “Why are we supposed to care about this guy?”
The film’s other issue is its staid moralism, with misogyny, slut shaming, and homophobia. This isn’t unusual for classic noir, which tends to revel in a prurient “deviance” which is fascinating but must be sternly reprimanded by some strong patriarch at the film’s conclusion. By the 2000s, though, many films had turned the tropes on their heads—the hero/victor of 1998’s neo-noir Wild Things is a bisexual teen femme fatale, as just one example.
De Palma in many of his films, roots for the marginalized and “perverse,” who are systematically villainized in the work of his idol Hitchcock. Body Double treats porn performers as fellow movie craftspeople; Raising Cain’s hero turns out, after much misdirection, to be a trans woman; Femme Fatale’s hero is just who the title says it is. This refusal to follow the old Hollywood rules about villains and heroes and just desserts is part of why De Palma’s best films, for all their formal beauty, can feel so cheerfully anarchic.
Not so with The Black Dahlia though. As in the noir blueprint, sex workers, lesbians, and strong women are all presented as seductive but ultimately untrustworthy and corrupting. The blonde who needs some guy to save her is the good woman, and righteousness is sealed by true love and a heterosexual, monogamous kiss.
It’s hard to believe that De Palma really believes in the good hetero cop parable he’s selling. But the viscerally mean-spirited takedown of the femme fatale doesn’t leave a lot of room to read the movie against itself—and the lackluster Lee drags the whole enterprise down in a way that doesn’t make you want to give the film the benefit of the doubt. De Palma’s erratic enough that his best efforts are always a surprise, and his worst are always a disappointment. This is the latter.