Although much more commercially successful, the "L.A. Quartet" novels by the disturbed but fascinating noir novelist James Ellroy — consisting of The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz — didn't represent the great artistic leap forward that his "Underworld U.S.A." trilogy (American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand and the upcoming Blood's a Rover) did. The latter books were the ones that really lifted Ellroy from skilled genre specialist to ambitious and near-brilliant American novelist, representing both his own development as a writer and his desire to see the noir novel shed its genre restrictions and take its place amongst great literature. Even if one argues that White Jazz is the real transition — and many people have, convincingly — The Black Dahlia is a rough piece of work, somewhat formless and definitely formulaic in a way that his later books would avoid. While it features many of the same themes of sexual obsession and moral ambiguity that would mark his later work, it remained somewhat inextricably bound in the bad parts of pulp and the tendency to police-prodedural tropes. That said, the "L.A. Quartet" books are far more straightforward narratives, with less emphasis on the black depths of psychology and more to carry the narrative than chopped-up internal monologues. No one has yet attempted to film any of the "Underworld U.S.A.", but if it ever happens, the results will likely be a less successful film than L.A. Confidential; the qualities that make it a lesser novel — overemphasis on plot, weaker internal monologue, and a grounding in the archetypical qualities of film noir — are the same ones that made it a better film. The Black Dahlia, for all its faults, is an eminently more filmable book than The Cold Six Thousand. Or so you might have thought until Brian De Palma showed up in 2006 and proved you wrong, wrong, wrong by burping out this mishandled disaster of an adaptation. WHAT IT HAD: Good intentions, and not much else. It's not as if De Palma doesn't know how to handle film noir — he's proven on many occasions that he's adept at the genre, and had illustrated his affinity as recently as his previous movie (2002's underrated Femme Fatale). Even though he wasn't able to hold his post-modernist trickster tendencies in check, The Black Dahlia could have worked as simultaneous tribute to and subversion of classic noir, the only possible way to read the way it came out that makes any sense, if he'd assembled a better cast, better script, and. . . well, different director. Mark Isham provides some nice, moody music for the soundtrack, and, as one might expect from the man who brought you The Untouchables, it's a gorgeous-looking film with some great Vilmos Szigmond cinematography.
WHAT IT LACKED: Where to begin? A coherent vision, a decent script, a solid creative interpretation of the source material, a consistent point of view, and most of all, a cast worthy of the material. Screenwriter Josh Friedman had worked on the script for years, but it's still a mess, and clearly not to his strengths, which lie mostly in sci-fi genre work. It had originally been optioned to David Fincher, who, given De Palma's clear boredom and frustration with the project, may have been a much better choice to tackle the project. And the cast is pretty much an absolute disaster: Josh Hartnett completely lacks either charisma or weight, Scarlett Johansson is in way over her head, Aaron Eckhart is a non-entity, Hilary Swank looks like she should be in a completely different movie, and Mia Kirshner isn't even remotely up to the task of playing the title role, especially given that it's much expanded from the novel.
DID IT SUCCEED?: No way. Brian De Palma is already one of the most divisive directors around, with legions of haters for every dozen fans he's picked up over the years, but even his staunchest defenders — I'm one — couldn't get behind The Black Dahlia. The critical consensus on the release of the long-awaited film was that it was a megaton bomb, and for once, the accepted wisdom is pretty much right on the money. A good movie could have been made from James Ellroy's novel, but this sure as hell isn't it. The novel is a formative effort from Ellroy, and while L.A. Confidential is still superior to the movie, so too is The Black Dahlia for entirely different reasons. With White Jazz slated to hit the big screen next year directed by Joe Carnahan — who most recently brought us the abysmal Smokin' Aces — Ellroy's luck with film adaptations of his work will likely continue circling the drain.