Only Swank delivers the goods. Her character, a rich brat out of Raymond Chandler by way of Ellroy (think The Big Sleep, but creepier) lives with her whack-job family in one of those mansions that serves as a tomb for its inhabitants and a monument to their ambitions. De Palma obviously enjoys hanging out with this decadent brood, whose demons read as symptomatic of the city it calls home and whose pathologies prove nuttily entertaining.
But if he seems right at home among the Linscotts, De Palma is ill at ease when he spends time with most anyone else. His best work here, which notably involves none of the principals, is a fantastic shot that moves up from street level to peer over the roof of a building where some crows are ominously cawing. Behind the building on the next block, a woman with a carriage pauses to look at something in a lot, before breaking into a shrieking run. This is bravura filmmaking, reminiscent of some of De Palma’s other grand flourishes, in that you are both aware of the image’s self-conscious artificiality (you can almost feel the director hovering nearby) and captive to its emotional impact.
The ability to draw you into a film while simultaneously making you aware that you are watching a movie is an important element in some of his most successful work. This helps explain why he’s better when playing within the strict confines of genre, and in the key of pop, than when trying his hand at heavy reality, as he did in the lugubrious Vietnam drama Casualties of War. Reality weighs similarly heavy on The Black Dahlia. Betty Short was a real woman who was slowly and brutally tortured to death. Her story may have the makings of great pulp fiction, but there is nothing playfully cinematic or campy about it.
The murdered woman simply doesn’t inspire De Palma to unhinged creativity the way she did Ellroy. That said, there are tantalizing glimpses of another film interpretation in the short scenes featuring Betty Short. During the investigation, some audition reels turn up, with her trying out for a role. As Kirshner, wearing torn stockings and streaked mascara, reads for the part, looking into the camera with her spooky, clear eyes, you see need and desperation and why a frightened young woman with no resources beyond her looks might have relied on a body whose very vulnerability would finally betray her. Every so often, an off-screen male voice asks Betty a question, needling and provoking her until she crawls toward the camera like a sacrifice.
And the man behind the voice? Why, De Palma, of course.
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