Dreams are not movies or reality. They are the mind's attempt to sort out difficult information. The difficult reality portrayed in this dream-like movie is that Elizabeth Short is only one of many.
The atmosphere can be quite oppressive at times, as the audience is put right in among the Dahlias in a Hollywood that is exactly as glamorous as a burlesque house in the low rent section of any town. It should play more cheerily at home with the lights on, as it would in a drive-in on the same bill with, say The Indestructible Man or Gun Crazy. If you are reading this 10 or 20 years down the line you can watch Black Dahlia Movie for a glimpse of the world that was. This dream-like vision will tell you something about how people felt about this subject when it was made. The director can be seen working on the movie. It's his troubled point-of-view that puts actual talented unknowns in very contemporary settings. Little walkways between buildings, seedy-looking houses where parties are staged by fake big-shots, and the plain old streets of Hollywood.
The editing could use some tightening because it isn't a dream, only dream-like, and I wish Ramzi Abed had had a bigger budget. People who dislike the early and later work of Stanley Kubrick and the jazzy poetical riffing of Jack Kerouac will not like this one bit. Repeat viewing can bring out it's more traditional narrative qualities. Toward the end, as many dreams do at the approach of wakefulness, the story seems to be trying to reconcile itself to the harsh reality it has been contemplating by imagining fantastic resolutions, each with it's own narrative logic, then goes back where it began with the young dead woman in the weedy lot. There's no way to fix what was done to her.
This is just the sort of cultural document an impressionable young person needs to see. Never mind that the occasionally not-so-great acting and tellingly low budget will make them laugh, or the gruesome murders portrayed give them nightmares. A timely warning might keep some kid from making a mistake.
The contribution of David J and other musicians helps. There are lots of cute actresses in this movie. Kristen Kerr, who plays the chief Dahlia, is poetry in motion.
The atmosphere can be quite oppressive at times, as the audience is put right in among the Dahlias in a Hollywood that is exactly as glamorous as a burlesque house in the low rent section of any town. It should play more cheerily at home with the lights on, as it would in a drive-in on the same bill with, say The Indestructible Man or Gun Crazy. If you are reading this 10 or 20 years down the line you can watch Black Dahlia Movie for a glimpse of the world that was. This dream-like vision will tell you something about how people felt about this subject when it was made. The director can be seen working on the movie. It's his troubled point-of-view that puts actual talented unknowns in very contemporary settings. Little walkways between buildings, seedy-looking houses where parties are staged by fake big-shots, and the plain old streets of Hollywood.
The editing could use some tightening because it isn't a dream, only dream-like, and I wish Ramzi Abed had had a bigger budget. People who dislike the early and later work of Stanley Kubrick and the jazzy poetical riffing of Jack Kerouac will not like this one bit. Repeat viewing can bring out it's more traditional narrative qualities. Toward the end, as many dreams do at the approach of wakefulness, the story seems to be trying to reconcile itself to the harsh reality it has been contemplating by imagining fantastic resolutions, each with it's own narrative logic, then goes back where it began with the young dead woman in the weedy lot. There's no way to fix what was done to her.
This is just the sort of cultural document an impressionable young person needs to see. Never mind that the occasionally not-so-great acting and tellingly low budget will make them laugh, or the gruesome murders portrayed give them nightmares. A timely warning might keep some kid from making a mistake.
The contribution of David J and other musicians helps. There are lots of cute actresses in this movie. Kristen Kerr, who plays the chief Dahlia, is poetry in motion.