The Blue Dahlia is directed by George Marshall and written by Raymond Chandler. It stars Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, William Bendix & Howard Da Silva. Plot sees Ladd playing a navy officer who returns home to his unfaithful wife after fighting in the South Pacific. When she is found murdered he is the number one suspect, he must find who is responsible before it's too late.
Legend has it that Paramount Pictures were so pleased about the success of Double Indemnity, and in particular Raymond Chandler's writing on it, they handed the writer a contract, where, he produced this tightly wound film noir piece. Nominated for an Academy Award, Chandler had in fact had to give up his teetotaller way of life (he was a recovering alcoholic) so as to gain inspiration for the story. Also of note is that his original ending was shelved after objections by the U.S. Military Department, shame, because I believe that an already good film could have been a better one with Chandler's original denouement. Oh well, what's left is still rather rewarding to the genre faithful.
After This Gun for Hire and The Glass Key, this was the third pairing of Alan Ladd & Veronica Lake. Their working chemistry set in stone, it's nice that the film doesn't solely rely on the pair to make Chandler's material work. True enough their scenes have a tenderness to them, acting as a sort of warm place to go to when the harsher aspects in the plot hit home hard, but the film is far more than just the Ladd & Lake show. What marks it out as a worthy point of reference in the film noir cycle, is that it delves into the psyche of the servicemen returning home from the war. Observing how they were being received and showing that some of them also carried emotional scars as well as those ones gained in battle. Then Chandler mixes it in with a hard-boiled murder investigation as our wrongly accused protagonist trawls the mean streets of L.A. searching to clear his name. With that comes grungy premises' and periods of brutal violence, all cloaked moodily by the competent Marshall. Ladd does good work, very appealing yet tough, but it's Bendix who steals the movie with an intense portrayal of an ex serviceman with psychological issues.
With the original ending and a deeper exploration of the war veterans not being warmly received on homecoming, The Blue Dahlia would have been close to being a genre classic. The script and Bendix ensure, tho, that it's still very easy to recommend to like minded fans of the genre and its dark alley offshoots. 7.5/10
