Reviews

I've been captivated by the Black Dahlia case because it happened in January, 1947, a time when my hormones were kicking in and my crushes tended to focus on dark-haired beauties like Linda Darnell and Gail Russell.

The New York Daily News and the Mirror were quick to publish pictures and headlines about the pretty, raven-haired 22 year-old, whose bisected corpse was discovered in a lot outside Hollywood. The case had no serial killer draw, nor did it require any, the crime itself grotesque enough by itself. Her name was Elizabeth Short.

The case had been addressed, obliquely, in "True Confessions," a novel by James Gregory Dunne, published in 1972. A film of the same name, released in 1981, was both an excellent police procedural and a study of the shadier side of religio-politics, tracing the parallel careers of brothers, one a tainted cop, the other a wheeling and dealing monsignor. In that film, the victim, "The Virgin Tramp," had nothing to do with Elizabeth Short, except for the method of her murder and the means of her disposal.

When I heard that a film was being planned with Brian DiPalma directing, the news evoked a feeling of restrained enthusiasm. The first shoe dropped for me when I read that the screenplay was being based on James Ellroy's novel, The Black Dahlia. It had been several years since I'd read Ellroy's admitted page-turner; but the book was really about two Los Angeles cops, in the harsh, corrupt LAPD atmosphere of the 1940s. Beth Short was a supporting cast member. She deserved better; and she still does, so many years after her death.

Despite all the ambient lawlessness, the film opens with a scheduled fight between former heavyweight Lee Blanchard, played by a tightly-wound Aaron Eckhart and former light-heavy Dwight "Bucky" Bleichert, hair parted in the middle and plastered down, like a prom night bandleader, portrayed by Josh Hartnett. The bout is to promote a proposition for a bond issue, which will cover an across the board pay hike for the LAPD. The high level infighting and the bloody, thudding bout consume nearly a half hour of the film. Blanchard and Bleichert are partners, and they form a trio with Blanchard's lover, Kaye Lake (Scarlett Johansson), whose major preoccupations are the tortured exercise of smoking cigarettes with a long holder and filling out soft white fluffy sweaters, a la Lana Turner.

The two cops, partners known as Fire and Ice, are proccupied with an elderly white perp, his black lady fiend, and an obsese black pimp in part of town where gun shots are not unexpected; and while they're so engaged, we see a mother, deserting her carriage running and screaming for help because of the grim discovery she's made no so far away. Even here, Betty Short gets second billing in her own picture.

When the investigation does focus on Beth Short it is usually through the steadying efforts Inspector Russ Millard (Mike Starr). Bleichert is much distracted and Blanchard becomes consumed, having apparently been emotionally overwhelmed by the filmed vulnerability of Beth Short (Mia Kirshner). Both are seemingly distracted by a soon-to-be released villain from Blanchard's past, days away from freedom.

Kirshner is one of the better elements of the film, capturing the Massachusetts-born girl, in over her head in a futile search for stardom. Striving for stardom, she slides down the greased walls of flashy nightspots, where high rollers like Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank) go slumming for kicks. Linscott's parents, Emmett Linscott (John Kavanagh, looking Machiavellian) and Ramona (Fiona Shaw, a kinetic and spastic wreck) are properly neurotic, having their former dog now a stuffed tribute to Daddy's first million. Daddy's a transported Scot whose made his fortune in housing developments, hastily built with left-over studio throw aways.

With Di Palma we always get striking images. Mark Isham can construct the perfect score for any genre. Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography is gripping. Beth Short is dead. Her case is unsolved. She deserves better.

Writer-director Neil Burger's adaptation of a Steven Milhauser short story, "The Illusionist" transports us to late nineteenth century Vienna, Freud, feudal lords and ladies and phantasms, the spiritualists' promise of a personally intimate hereafter.

The setting is a flash-forward of fifteen years from the film's beginning in which we meet two teens, a young cabinet maker's son, set on his life's path after a chance meeting with an itinerant magician, and young Sophie, born to a much higher station. He presents Sophie with a hand-carved wooden locket containing a secret compartment into which he has put his photograph. Viennese society abhors the vacuum between their states; and so they are forcibly separated. We soon feel as if we're caught up in a fairy tale, made a bit uneasy by the proposition that these wizards and villains are real.

Having adopted the stage name of Manheim the Illusionist, the young man, now an adult, Edward Norton, is fast becoming the darling of Viennese society; and at one performance, he asks for a volunteer, in response to which Crown Prince Leopold, Rufus Sewell, offers his beautiful companion, Jessica Biel, who happens to be Sophie.

Leopold attends such entertainments as these not so much to be amused as to display how clever he himself is at unmasking the performers' gimmicks. He does not suffer frustration easily; and so vents his on Chief Police Inspector Uhl, Paul Giamatti, himself an amateur magician, always looking to learn more. Giamatti, son of a butcher, faces the same societal barriers and ceilings that the two youngsters encountered fifteen years earlier. The detective's career and political future are firmly tied to the level of approbation he receives from the nasty, vindictive Crown Prince. After a particularly embarrassing challenge,thwarted, Leopold insists that the Illusionist's stardom in Vienna must end. The volatile Leopold also announces his intention to marry Sophie. One is left to imagine his reaction at Sophie's rejection.

After a time, Mannheim buys an old abandoned theater and makes a comeback, presenting a new type of illusion. No more sprouting orange plants or handky-bearing butterflies, Mannheim now conjures spirit emanations from the other side, astonishing and giving renewed hope to audiences in search of their own immortality. Can such trickery bring down a monarchy or threaten the succession?

Edward Norton is both steely and vulnerable as the title character. Giamatti portrays Uhl, at once pressured, avidly inquisitive, deeply knowing and positively manic for things well done. Jessica Biel brings a vulnerable yet fiery Sophie into the plot. Rufus Sewell is both seething, condescending elitist and emotionally tortured perfectionist with no tolerance for disappointment, especially in himself. We get the feeling that the prospect of the throne, for all his display, weighs heavily on his shoulders.

The absolute stars of the film are cinematographer Dick Pope and the magnificent settings provided by Petra Habova and Ondrej Nekrasil. If one listens carefully to the Philip Glass score, there are recurrent echoes of Glass' 1983 themes of "Koyaaniqatsi."

One is reminded of the title. In this context lies the single flaw in the production. Yes, while photo imagery was a practiced art by the turn of the century, as were the wonders of smoke and mirrors, there does come a point where the envelope is pushed just too far; and at this point, the ability of the audience to suspend disbelief is diminished.