LA Confidential Vs the Black Dahlia: A Comparative Film Review on the Classics

Few genres that appeared on the silver screen have ever captured the emotionality and raw humanity of Film Noir. The heavy shadows, stylistic lighting, and morally undefined characters speak to the grit of life and the style of the romantic. In short, it is the stuff dreams are made of. Film noir is composed of several things: a character who has total moral ambiguity, a femme-fatal, an element of intrigue, and a theme that conveys the fact that the good guys don't always win. We know of films that have epitomized the genre ("The Maltese Falcon", "Double Indemnity", "Out of The Past", "Farewell, My Lovely" etc..), but most are restrained to the 1940's and 50's. The black and white adds to such films and increases the stark contrasts and uneasy atmosphere. Its hard to have film noirs nowadays. After all, how can people relate in a post WWII era to a celluloid world racked with instability? However, every so often a movie comes along that captures all the key elements as well as adding the obligatory cultural baggage that modern moviegoers insist on. 1997's "LA Confidential" was one such film.

Unlike many film noirs, the camera work is not particularly stylistic or noticeable. Every period piece detail of 50's Hollywood is present, yet the stark lighting and heavy handed boom shots are absent. The characters sure make up for it though. In a world where crooked cops and bureau politics matter more than solving cases, three different lawmen must come together to get some answers. The ambiguity of Guy Pearce's strategist character is palpable. And the moral conflict behind both Kevin Spacey's showman cop and Russell Crowe's muscleman is positively electric. Some actors dabble with the cadences of the period, but most speak gruffly as they talk (or bludgeon) their way into the seedy underbelly of Las Angeles. The whole film is almost a cat and mouse game between 50's cliche and gritty reality as romanticism plays hide and seek with gritty cynicism. Crowe's character is most intriguing and, as with all such antiheroes, there is more than meets the eye. He is a meathead with a wounded look in his dull eyes. He has a nerve in his sole that twangs when he sees a woman being brutalized; beneath the muscle, he has a heart. When he falls for Kin Basinger's high-class hooker, he proves that he is able to find purity within the impure. That constant quest is really what the whole movie is about. Gunfights, drug rackets, pornography, and double crosses aside, finding justice, clarity, and closure is most important. So when Crowe finally comes back to Basinger it is like a long awaited deep breath.

Unlike "L.A Confidential", Brian DePalma's adaptation of James Ellroy's "The Black Dahlia" (Ellroy happened to write both) was very stylish in its camera work and operatic in its construction. The film toys with he same themes of upper-class involvement in the bizarre underworld of Las Angeles. The violence in this movie is almost beautiful in its slow motion depiction and heavily scored back ground. The characters are just as strong, if not stronger. Josh Hartnett breaks away from his pretty boy status by immediately having his teeth knocked out in a boxing match nicely reminiscent of the "The Setup" with Robert Ryan. Hartnett's Bucky Bleichart is pure by noir standards but he still has his breaking point and has his weaknesses. One of those weakness is in his lust, directed toward Hillary Swank's flawless femme fatal. Her cold, tempting portrayal for an upper-class heiress with taste for the lowlife rival's Mary Astor in "The Maltese Falcon". Aaron Eckhart's tortured, hardboiled cop is played to perfection, which makes his graphic death all the more horrible. The combination of shattered illusions of purity and violence (epitomized by the memorable fight in the art deco stairwell) has turned Bucky into a calloused cynic. He finds some consolation in Scarlet Johansen's blonde good girl at the end of the film when he returns to her door, tired, jaded, and enlightened.