I hated "Black Dahlia" when I saw it in theatres because, like everyone else, I didn't think it stacked up well next to "LA Confidential".
Flash forward a couple years and I now think it's one of De Palma's greatest films. "LA Confidential", in comparison, now seems filled with cliches. How many movies do we need where the "fatherly boss" is actually the "secret bad guy"? "Monster's Inc", "The Fugitive", "La Confidential", "Minority Report" etc etc, it's all the same thing.
"Black Dahlia", in contrast, is so murkly, so labyrinthal, that you get completely lost in its world. It's only upon second and third viewings that the viewer, like a detective, begins to cutlass his way through the plot, clues slowly coming into focus.
Noirs like "The Maltese Falcon", "The Big Sleep", "Black Dahlia", "The Big Lebowski" and "A Scanner Darkly" are, in the long run, much more interesting than more action oriented fare like "La Confidential". With plots so dense they verge on annoying, these are the noirs which reward repeat viewings and tend to age best.
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waddayanuts
15 years ago
Noirs like "The Maltese Falcon", "The Big Sleep", "Black Dahlia", "The Big Lebowski" and "A Scanner Darkly" are, in the long run, much more interesting than more action oriented fare like "La Confidential". With plots so dense they verge on annoying, these are the noirs which reward repeat viewings and tend to age best.
I mostly agree but I wouldn't include A Scanner Darkly. The plot is quite simple when you think it over. Thus, I was surprised that your entire review of it deals with the plot.
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Spoilers follow)
To me, it isn't the plot that makes the film interesting. It's just a pretty forgettable plot with a twist in the end.
The interesting aspects is how Linklater in his typical fashion shows the environment and the public feeling by merely showing a little group of people talking together about nothing. The film is packed with those seemingly irrelevant astrays from the plot. Like the scene with the bicycle. It's a brilliant scene which exaggerates the general paranoia that must exist in a surveillance society. And the plot is only interesting in that perspective, I think. It basically tells us that the government is feeding the citizens with a drug that makes them paranoid as an excuse of doing extreme 24/7 surveillance, which also makes people paranoid. On both levels this film is about paranoia in a government-controlled society and that's exactly what Linklater so efficiently shows with all the talkative scenes that aren't related to the plot.
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PhantomPhan222
15 years ago
"How many movies do we need where the "fatherly boss" is actually the "secret bad guy"? "Monster's Inc", "The Fugitive", "La Confidential", "Minority Report" etc etc, it's all the same thing."
Yeah but remember that aside from 'The Fugitive', 'L.A. Confidential' came before all those other movies. And the novel which had the self-same plot twist, came before any of those movies.
"People always sing 'Part of Your World' at auditions... that's why I only know one lyric."
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