Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

filippaberry84 I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Tweekums When US Navy pilot Johnny Morrison returns home from the war in the Pacific he is understandably angered to find his wife partying with another man, Eddie Harwood, owner of the Blue Dahlia nightclub. She is far from apologetic. He threatens her with a gun put then tells her she isn't worth it before leaving her, and the gun. As he walks through the rain he is picked up by attractive blonde, Joyce Harwood, she is Eddie's ex although at this point in the story neither knows the others name.That night Johnny's friend Buzz, who is suffering from constant headaches and PTSD after a war injury, goes to find him but ends up meeting his wife. The next morning she is found dead and the police consider Johnny to be the prime suspect after the house detective tells them he caught the pair arguing. When Johnny hears about this he decides not to turn himself in; instead he checks into a cheap hotel; here he finds a message from his late wife on the back of a photograph; it suggests that Eddie is in fact a killer on the run… a clear motive for murder.This is a pretty solid film noir from the pen of Raymond Chandler. We know that Johnny is innocent but there is a good sense of danger and a real mystery about who really did it; Buzz and Eddie may be the prime suspects but they aren't the only possibilities. The cast do a good job; Alan Ladd impresses as Johnny and Doris Dowling is delightfully unpleasant as his doomed wife. Veronica Lake is solid enough as Joyce; she is clearly meant to be the leading lady but her character is a little bland… perhaps this seemed so because I was expecting her to be more of a femme fatale. The story does rely on coincidence a little too much but not enough to really bother me. The ending is the film's greatest weakness; I wasn't surprised to learn that this wasn't the ending that was planned but a last minute change to avoid having a returning serviceman shown as a killer. Overall this is a fine film noir that I'm sure fans of the genre will enjoy.

tomgillespie2002 George Marshall's The Blue Dahlia marked the third time leads Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake starred together in a film noir - following This Gun for Hire and The Glass Key (both 1942) - and, more notably, the first time that legendary author Raymond Chandler penned an original screenplay. Chandler's infamous struggle to finish the screenplay after the studio refused to shoot his original ending - while filming was rushed through in fear of Ladd having to return to the Army - works both in favour of the film and against it. On one hand, The Blue Dahlia is a rather scrappy, messy noir, lending it a certain ruggedness, and on the other hand the film's climax seems rather sudden and out of the blue.Three discharged Navy officers, Johnny (Ladd), Buzz (William Bendix) and George (Hugh Beaumont), arrive home after serving in the South Pacific. Before Johnny returns to his wife Helen (Doris Dowling), the three stop for a drink and almost get into a fight when Buzz, suffering from shell shock and a metal plate in his head following a war injury, demands that a fellow officer turn off the loud 'monkey music' that causes him to suffer from delusions. At his home, Johnny returns to discover his wife drunk and having a none-too-discreet affair with nightclub owner Eddie Harwood (Howard Da Silva). Livid, Johnny threatens her with a pistol before leaving and eventually hitching a ride with Joyce Harwood (Lake), who just happens to be Eddie's ex. When Helen turns up dead the next day, Johnny finds himself on the run from the law with a mystery to unravel.While it was understandably overshadowed by Howard Hawks' masterpiece The Big Sleep released the same year, The Blue Dahlia is a solid piece of film-making, bolstered by a suspenseful central murder mystery that keeps you guessing until the very end. Ladd is suitably stoic and hard-boiled as the protagonist, but the film undoubtedly belongs to Bendix as the unpredictable and somewhat tragic damaged war hero, with the film's opening scene establishing just how lovable yet threatening his character can be. Chandler didn't warm to Veronica Lake, famously dubbing her 'Moronica Lake' and suggesting she works best when she keeps her mouth shut and sits pretty. His comment was certainly unfair - Lake was an enigmatic screen presence - and Chandler punishes her with a rather slight amount of screen-time and a character who fails to offer any real impact on the plot. Still, this is a clever, engrossing noir, with special mention also going to Da Silva, one of the victims of the Hollywood blacklist.

GManfred The story goes that Raymond Chandler was under the gun to finish the script for "The Blue Dahlia", and so chased his demons away as best he could to put the last period in a timely manner to satisfy Paramount studio heads. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable noir with no basis in reality and succeeds due to the efforts of a first-rate cast and director.The theory of the Phenomena of Coincidence is stretched to the limits as scene after scene is loaded with 'wouldn't ya know it' circumstances as well as dumb-luck stuff that defies belief. But this is Hollywood, where that kind of thing happens all the time. Where else could the hero, on the lam as they say in noir, hitch a ride with the wife of the villain of the piece? or get taken to a hotel to get fleeced by two guys who have nothing to do with the story?Not an awful lot of logic here, plus an abrupt ending which doesn't quite fit. But the stars are great and the story works on you like a scotch on the rocks, or two. Hooray for Hollywood!

MisterWhiplash I have to wonder if Raymond Chandler really had a passion for this project - perhaps he did, it was the only original screenplay he wrote, by himself, in the years he wrote for Hollywood features - or if it was just a project to quickly dash off to make some cash. It's not that he doesn't put his all in it as far as his dialog goes, which, if you watch films like Double Indemnity (albeit with Wilder and adapting Cain) or The Big Sleep (which really does retain a lot of his dialog if not all the plot), this does have the same cadences and cynical, witty banter with characters. It's a hardcore pulp noir involving a man who is wrongfully accused of killing his wife after coming home from the war - part of the motive may be, people suspect, that he was despondent over her drunk-driving killing their child - though we know he didn't do it as he has an alibi that sticks.What makes me question it is that, you know, we've seen this sort of thing before with the man wrongfully accused - hell, it was Hitchcock's stock and trade for many years. What also seems kind of confused and, though well-intentioned, dated, is the depiction of shell-shock (or PTSD for the modern crowd) with the character of Buzz (William Bendix). This is a fascinating supporting character in the way that he has no other real purpose in the film - albeit he does work himself into the plot by a certain point, to be sure - except as a kind of irritated Id, a man who freaks out whenever he hears music due to the metal plate in his head from the war. There's not a shred of depth to him, and yet he's both an inspired creation and something that feels totally dead-weight, a one-dimensional being, doing the same thing scene after scene like a big lummox of a child.But maybe it's some of the other characters that feel stock... no, they're finely drawn enough, those criminals and gangsters that take up the space in the office of the Blue Dahlia night-club, or some of the others that tail Alan Ladd's character. Maybe it's Ladd himself and how he's directed that doesn't quite work, as he is just kind of a bland presence here - more in appearance perhaps than his voice - and Lake is similar, though she brings a little more emotion to it in scene to scene reacting to things and being the not-really-femme-fatale of the story (no, that would maybe be more-so the wife). Not that Doris Dowling does better when it comes time for her to emote about the Tragedy of Little Dickie.I criticize all this mainly because it should have been tremendous stuff, and... it's not. But director George Marshall, under John Houseman's production, and featuring an awesome supporting turn for Howard DaSilva as Eddie Harwood (if that indeed is his name!) there's enough here that works and makes for a very fun viewing. Sometimes just letting the actors take the entertaining aspects of Chandler's text - which also includes some bloody fight scenes with Ladd and some baddies in the third act - is enough to make me keep watching. It's still a cinematic world fused into film noir, and LA noir at that; the third act set at the house in the dark is moody in just the right atmosphere. And though everything gets wrapped up a little too quick - seriously, it made the audience I was with laugh out loud so to speak - the plot is fairly air-tight for what Chandler is working with, which involves the procedural stuff, false flags, and revelations that ultimately are about showing the two leads together in fine style.Actually, for Ladd and Lake, there is one very good scene here, where the two are in the car at night and trying to come up with the name from the initials J.M. A scene like that, somehow, the actors come off more relaxed, get into the script fully, and the direction is nice too. Maybe a little more of that and less formula. But, again, it's still good, really good, and a cut above other film noirs just by Chandler being a natural g-damn writer for men in coats with guns and dames with ulterior motives (and big lunk-heads who may or may not know any better)