“The Blue Dahlia” is a tight movie about Los Angeles chiselers, coppers, cabaret-owners, peepers, husband-deserters, just discharged Navy fliers who do violence to each other with the dispatch and unconcern of a person stamping an envelope. It is the neatest treatment that has been done on a Raymond Chandler novel and is filled as much with Chandler’s smartness (about Los Angeles county, its roads, its lush playgrounds; the looks and manners of high cops and low underworld yeggs; intimate views about gangsters that castrate them, make them weaker but more lovable), as it is with his Adrian-izing of Dashiell Hammett. Chandler makes the mayhem, drinking and talk stylized and arty; never allows his gangsters to lose their suavity, presence of mind, grace, sartorial elegance, wit in every kind of catastrophe; and turns everyone into a sophisticate—even the man in a union suit who operates a cut-throat flophouse.
The story concerns the terrible homecoming of three Navy buddies (Alan Ladd, William Bendix, Hugh Beaumont). Johnny (Alan Ladd), the one the others look up to most, finds that during his war years his wife has become an alcoholic, has killed his son, is in love with a cabaret-owner, so he leaves her. The next day, over a No. 2 with Orange Juice, he hears the police are after him for her murder, decides to avenge her and absolve himself, spends the next eight reels getting bounced around. The murderer turns out to be the person you give the least hang about. The two big notions “The Blue Dahlia” gets across are that (1) people today are living more destructively than ever, and killing, infidelity, hating and being hated all the time have become run-of-the-mill and all but boring, (2) the war veteran has been perfectly schooled to operate in a society similar to the one from which he was discharged. A wonderful example of the way people in “The Blue Dahlia” respond to catastrophe is the final shot of the police chief (Tom Powers) looking a little done in for having blown up the murderer, annoyed in a minor way that he has been the least bit affected emotionally by having to kill the old man.
“The Blue Dahlia” has been hammered down by the director (George Marshall) into a movie that has almost no slack, confusion or ease. Its people think, talk and walk with the greatest consciousness of destruction. They live in unsentimentalized surroundings that show in bas-relief the bleakness, glare, determined, incisive movement, seediness of a city (particularly the way it looks at night). The movie is worthless during its blow-off scenes—when the husband and wife spit at each other, when the flier throws the ceiling at a gangster, when the shell-shocked ex-bombardier goes panicky at the sound of frivolous music (jumping, crazy music that is unusually effective), shoots out a match at twenty paces to prove he wouldn’t have to be on top of a person to kill him. But when its people are going through the motions of every-day living—passing in and out of lobbies, motoring to the beach, asking to speak to someone on the phone—“The Blue Dahlia” is beautifully accurate in showing their tension, controlled behavior, suspiciousness and the personalities of people who don’t expect to live long or happily. It is perfect on atmosphere. The drive the hero and heroine take to Malibu is gummed with literary chit-chat, but anyone who likes night driving will be pleased with the airiness, the 50-mile-an-hour movement, the lights of roadside drive-ins that flash by, the sense of having been on the road a long time.
The film is well acted from top to bottom and especially in the in-between roles: the acting of a slimy house detective by Will Wright; Tom Powers as a stubborn police captain; Howard Da Silva as Eddie, the miserable hot shot who own a cabaret and loses a trick to every person in the movie because he has more character, sensitivity and good will than his job demands. For some reason he’s given a whole world of delicate feeling to put across—the kind that turns up occasionally in old gangster films, more often in French movies: for instance, his realization that he has lost a beautiful woman through his own faults and being frustrated half to death by her easy-as-pie tossing off of his advances. One wonderful episode is when the Navy hero clouts him as though he were swatting a fly; Eddie starts to hit back, realizes objectively he has no moral leg to stand on, having been intimate with the hero’s wife, begs his pardon and leaves like a gentleman. Da Silva brings off a remarkable number of sides on the character. Tom Powers has a dyspeptic look that makes him seem completely self-absorbed, and he acts with humorlessness and tenacious earnestness. All of which makes you respect his ability as a bloodhound because you don’t expect him to take his work lightly or to be swerved by sympathy for the suspects. He looks incorruptible and substantial, however much you may feel sorry for his suffering and want to help him. Along with his unyielding character, Powers is a fine actor who stands out in any film no matter how good the other players (he was the husband who was choked to death in “Double Indemnity”). Wright, as the voyeur, looks as if he never thought above the level of a filthy postcard, has a dirty voice that seems always to be squirming. He is excellent in showing curiosity over something vile he has done, as though he had completely forgotten having done it; also in portraying a person who only scares a little bit.
June 3, 1946