THE BLACK DAHLIA - A Missed Opportunity

Since I get HBO/CineMax free for 3 months, I'm trying to make the most of it by catching up on movies I missed when they were in the theaters. THE BLACK DAHLIA is one such movie. I've read about the case for years, so when Hollywood finally decided to make a film about it, I'd wanted to see it, but for some reason, never got to on the big screen.

Now I'm glad I didn't waste $20+ (ticket + popcorn + drink) on it.

While I like Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johannson, and Hilary Swank in some things, and a few Brian DePalma films, this was a waste of all their talents. Based on the book by James Ellroy, which was more a noir detective love-triangle with the Black Dahlia crime as backdrop than an actual telling of the Elizabeth Short murder investigation, the film doesn't even do the noir thing well - in fact it's a mish-mash of pieces of noir-like vignettes jammed together. Unlike LA CONFIDENTIAL, where I understood the chemistry between all the leads and cared about each, the characters here fell flat. I didn't really care who ended up with which girl or if any of them survived to the end of the picture.

When it opens, it starts by introducing the fictional characters Ellroy used to weave in and around the Black Dahlia case rather than using any actual detectives. Even that could have worked if they had been truly interesting, but they end up as 1950s caricatures from bad B pics. Then, when the body is finally discovered in the movie (and even shown in its gruesome state - at least they got that mostly right), the story veers back off onto the fictional love-triangle and uses made up movie tests of Elizabeth Short to try to show what kind of girl the movie needs her to be to justify the weird and strange tangents into fantasy it takes... (Kind of reminds me of PEARL HARBOR, another Josh Hartnett movie - one that takes a title that will 'sell', tells a wholly unrelated and fictional story for most of the 2-3 hours, pasting something historical into it - mostly at the end and badly - to try to justify the title used to lure moviegoers into parting with their pocket change...)

It's too bad Hollywood missed a great opportunity to find (and let) someone tell a more accurate and compelling story of Elizabeth Short's real life LA murder: the sheer number of suspects, the hundreds of investigators involved (not just the two the movie boiled it down to), the terror 1950s LA experienced wondering who might be next, the seedy corruption of the times, the evidence that would disappear making it hard to prove who knew and said what when, and the fact that to this day it remains unsolved (unlike the movie's made up ending).

This is one movie that WON'T go on my 'watch again and again' list and definitely will never be added to my DVD collection! In fact, it was so bad, that after watching it, I immediately deleted it from my DISH DVR so it wouldn't take up valuable space for a better movie, even with hundreds of hours of available time for recording... (I LOVE that the DISH DVR is allowing me to also record HBO/Cinemax so I don't have to try to stay up til all hours to watch these movies I originally missed. Even for free, I wouldn't have wanted to lose 2 hours of much-needed beauty sleep over THE BLACK DAHLIA! LOL)

(2006) Rated R for strong violence, some grisly images, sexual content and language

Starring Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johannson, Aaron Eckhart, Hilary Swank, Mia Kirshner

THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE - HBO Film

I admit - I started to watch the movie tonight on HBO just out of sheer curiosity to see how they would handle such a 'sensational' topic: the first 'mainstream' naughty pin-up and bondage girl, the 'notorious Bettie Page'... I've read various things about Bettie over the years and wanted to see their version of her story to see how it jibed, figuring they would emphasize the sex over the story.

However, I was very pleasantly surprised at Gretchen Mol's characterization. She's beautiful in her own right and I hadn't seen her in much before so didn't approach the movie with too many preconceptions about the lead actress. In fact, she does such a great job subsuming her own looks and character into Bettie's, I would never have known who she was without looking it up. (From her pics on IMDb.com, Gretchen's usually a blond, but she looks equally amazing as a brunette in TNBP.)

Gretchen Mol manages to capture the 'innocent little girl in a woman's body' quality of Bettie, the joy and exuberance at life, the blindingly beautiful smile, the absolute happiness and playfulness Bettie exuded in the bulk of her pictures, nude or not. Bettie managed to make it all look like fun and natural (unlike the bulk of the pinups you see around today, where the women either look slutty or angry or bored.) Gretchen Mol caught those qualities Bettie was best known for amazingly well herself, never once making me think 'oh this is an actress playing Bettie' but feeling like I was really watching the original.

The movie, no doubt, took quite a few liberties with events and people, but I think they did a great job overall, managing to keep even the full nude scenes tasteful but mostly accurate based on the source material, showing a full range of the type of pics and movies Bettie actually posed for and acted in without making it seem the only justification for the whole movie. (Small differences, like using Jaguars instead of Cheetahs in the famous jungle pics can be forgiven since I like Jags better anyway. =)

The look and feel of the movie, bouncing between black and white and color was also done well. It puts you in a 50's old classic movies mood to start with, then makes you feel as if you've fallen into the real world with the characters in all their original color glory, 'fleshing' out scenes, if you will. (Bad pun, I know!)

Definitely worth watching in my opinion for anyone interested in the 1940's & 1950's, Bettie Page and the beginning of the 'sexual revolution' (mainstream, that is...) as Playboy and other magazines became commonplace.

(2006) Rated R for nudity, sexual content and some language

Starring Gretchen Mol, David Strathairn, Lily Taylor, John Collum, Norman Readus, Chris Bauer

Get your own copy:
THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE on eBay
THE NOTORIOUS BETTIE PAGE on Amazon