The Black Dahlia

Master storyteller Brian De Palma, known for such classic crime dramas as “The Untouchables,” “Scarface” and “Carlito’s Way,” as well as his suspense thrillers “Carrie,” “Dressed to Kill” and “Blow Out,” directs this adaptation of James Ellroy’s (“L.A. Confidential,” “American Tabloid”) best-selling crime novel.

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Elizabeth “Betty” Short was born July 29, 1924, in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. Like many young aspiring actresses in boom-era World War II, she was chasing a big dream: to make it in Hollywoodland. At the age of 19, she headed west to California, bouncing from her father’s home in Vallejo to the city of Santa Barbara before heading south to L.A.

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A challenge with The Black Dahlia was in finding a group of actors who could flesh out a modern film noir—and give nods to the Humphrey Bogart-Lauren Bacall and Fred MacMurray-Rita Hayworth thrillers of the ’40s and ’50s—without becoming caricatures of the very roles that inspired their performances. De Palma and the producers would turn to five young-yet-established actors and a collective of seasoned performers who could play the assortment of toughs, lovers and deceivers from Friedman’s screenplay and Ellroy’s mind.

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De Palma’s films are known for trios or quartets who come together in curious ways. Drawing side number two to the Bucky-Kay-Lee love triangle is actor Aaron Eckhart, someone De Palma describes as a “young Kirk Douglas.”

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Canadian actress Mia Kirshner—best known for her role as Jenny on the past two seasons of Showtime’s The L Word—had actually come in early to read for the role of the duplicitous Madeleine Linscott. De Palma was so taken with the actor’s performance that he and Friedman enhanced the scenes with the Dahlia and cast Kirshner in the film. “She’s really quite stunning,” he comments. “When I saw her test, I said, ‘Mia, I have to have you in this movie. We’re going to build up the character of the Dahlia, and I want you to play her.’”

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While known for a signature, deft style—one of recurring Hitchcockian themes, doppelgangers, femmes fatales, explosions of operatic violence and sweeping and stalking cameras—the director is the first to laughingly admit that he doesn’t consciously ask, “How can I make this more Brian De Palma?” when he starts a picture. “That’s an unconscious thing. I don’t know why you’re attracted to certain material,” he notes. “There’s just something that hooks you in and intrigues you.”

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In the film, De Palma keeps images of the Dahlia in the background until the very end, purposefully holding his camera off of close-ups of the body and building the audience’s morbid curiosity and anticipation for what the deceased Betty looks like. He, instead, introduces us to Betty—very much alive—through on-screen camera tests. De Palma continues, “It was as if someone was displaying a grotesque work of art, then saying, ‘look what I’ve done.’ Those pictures make you think someone was sculpting in flesh. They just seep into your subconscious. My concept was to hold that image back until the end of the film.”

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