Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that this film is premised on a grisly, real-life 1947 murder that remains unsolved and is still the subject of both Internet discussion and TV investigation/forensics shows. The film features frequent images of bloody, shot, and sliced-up bodies. A presumably insane character rants in a disturbing way before committing suicide violently. The film also includes other explicit scenes of violence (a riot, shootings, a throat being sliced, a face being cut while held in a vise). Characters (especially women) appear in various states of undress; the detectives watch a porn film made by the murder victim that features lesbian activity. A nightclub scene features showgirls dancing provocatively and kissing each other on stage. A couple of sex scenes suggest "passion" by having characters rip each other's clothes off. Characters use foul language (especially "f--k"), smoke a lot of cigarettes, and drink.
Families can discuss the longstanding fascination with the Black Dahlia murder case. How does it represent a mythic cautionary tale, involving young women and the evils of Hollywood as a dream factory and/or industry town? What messages does the film convey about women? Why is violence toward women so often sexualized (both in the media and in real life)?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
Men are fascinated by women -- mostly dead women -- in THE BLACK DAHLIA. As described by hardboiled narrator Bucky Bleichert (Josh Hartnett), the murder case at the film's center becomes an object of obsession, as he gets inextricably caught up in the tragic end of Betty Short (Mia Kirshner).
In part, this is a function of intersections between Betty's story and Bucky's own. Both seeking celebrity in Hollywood -- he as a boxer (who ends up as a detective), she as a starlet -- they share a combined sense of hope and dread. These feelings are reflected repeatedly in their environment. The film opens on the racially driven "Zoot Suit" riots (as described by Bucky), though director Brian De Palma soon leaves behind this broader social context in order to focus on individual pathologies.
Bucky's partner Lee (Aaron Eckhart) is especially troubled and troubling, a cop unable to negotiate the roiling corruption all around him. Mixed up with stolen money and a former prostitute named Kay (Scarlett Johansson), Lee finds a distraction of sorts in the Black Dahlia case. This trajectory is implied by the film's first long-distance shot of the corpse: When a woman discovers the body dumped by the side of a road and begins screaming, the camera pulls out and over to a parallel street, where Bucky and Lee are engaged in a deadly shootout with gangsters.
While Lee's investment in the case is never quite explained, it's enhanced, apparently, by his abuse of Benzedrine (which makes him "squirrelly," according to Bucky). While Lee pores over crime-scene photos, Bucky watches Betty's audition reels, awkward black-and-white images of a girl trying too hard to please her smarmy off-screen director. Eventually, Bucky's investigation leads him to a stag film in which Betty and another woman act out a lesbian scene in lacy black underwear.
Bucky's interest in Betty's films stands in for the generally titillating effects of movies and stardom, as manufactured by the notoriously bottom line-driven film industry. Bucky imagines himself as a deep thinker, though Kay suggests that he's not so bright. His dimness is evidenced by his interest in Madeleine (Hilary Swank), an obviously angry rich girl who appeals to Bucky in part because she looks like Betty. Smitten when he first sees Maddie at an underground lesbian club (where a tuxedoed k.d. lang belts out "Love for Sale"), Bucky later sits through an excruciating dinner at her parents' home, during which her father (John Kavanagh) shows off his power and her mother (Fiona Shaw) lapses into drunken hysteria.
This dinner reestablishes the differences between the haves and the have-nots; Bucky must figure how those differences affect his case (and they always do affect it). Meanwhile, although he sees himself as a man in control, it's increasingly clear that he's not. And so, viewers begin to suspect his judgments.
And in this, the movie takes up obsession as a concept, abstracted and insistently masculine. While De Palma's work is famously misogynist and self-referential (not to say self-obsessed), it's hardly unique. The Black Dahlia is invested in the usual subjects -- the lurid murder, the business of Hollywood, the pain of sex, the objectification of (dead) women, the resolve of the dumb detective -- that make movies both disappointing and mesmerizing.
Families looking for noir thrills might prefer Chinatown, L.A. Confidential, or Mulholland Drive.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentPartial nudity in a "stag film," in which two women use a dildo and wrist restraints; women in underwear; lesbian nightclub scene shows women kissing and writhing in a dance number; lyrics refer to "Love for Sale" sex scenes and post-coital scenes (rip off blouse, passionate kissing, movement under covers, naked chests visible). |
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ViolenceSevered-in-half corpse is visible several times (including references to her face cut ear-to-ear); bloody boxing scenes; opening riot scene (punching and fighting); shootings (blood visible and violent imagery); throat cut; fall from balcony; at a crime scene, a dead child with bullet hole in head; description of shooting a pet dog (now stuffed); bloody bat (reference to beating); suicide by shot to the head (explicit); blood spreads under head of murdered man. |
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LanguageRepeated use of "f--k" (over 15); other language (c-word, "hell," "damn," "ass," etc.). |
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Social BehaviorDetectives become obsessed with the murder of a young starlet; plot concerns corruption, grisly murder, insanity. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoFrequent smoking by protagonists; some drinking in social situations (dinner); cop takes Benzedrine and becomes unhinged. |
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