Memorable, crazy movie

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Absolutely the worst movie.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

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.

I've watched this movie over a few times recently, not because it's a flawless noir masterpiece—it isn't—but to enjoy the characterization, the period feel and that unique Chandler dialogue. The parts add up to much more than the whole, I'd say. In discussing some key moments below, I will avoid giving away any plot details or the ending.A word in defence of Doris Dowling (as Helen). There's lots of compassion for Buzz, whose war injury and experiences cause him to act erratically, but poor Helen gets little sympathy for her own trauma. We presume a good egg like Johnny wouldn't have married her if she'd been a bad sort, but she's accidentally caused the death of her little boy through negligence by driving while drunk (his photo is evidently Alan Ladd as a child). Unable to live with the crushing guilt, and with her husband the other side of the world, she's crawled into a bottle, something Chandler could write so well from experience. She spends her time tipsy, a lush surrounding herself with good-timers and having casual affairs to drown out the memory, just to get through the days. Then war-hero Johnny suddenly turns up and she's confronted with the man whose son she's killed. That dreadful guilt resurfaces and, bitter and self-loathing, she blurts out the whole sorry tale, baiting Johnny so she can make him hurt as she does (and probably to evoke enough hatred in him to make him mete out the punishment she deep-down feels she deserves). It works almost too well, though, as he pulls a gun on her—but, moments later, regaining his self-control, he walks out, deciding she isn't worth it. Later, regretful, she unsuccessfully tries to contact him, then takes off for the hotel bar.I feel it's unfair to criticize as 'hammy' or over-dramatic Dowling's acting in the bungalow scenes—it was George Marshall's job to get it just the way he wanted it and, whether laughing hysterically, wincing, or tugging absent-mindedly on the phone wire, Doris must have been closely following his directions.She seems nicely at home once at the bar, where some of my favourite moments take place. Buzz (in a coincidence too far, to be honest) wanders in as he waits to meet Helen then, almost by accident, picks her up, unaware she's the very woman he's waiting to see. For two solid minutes, she is cool, appealing, beautiful, and they share some cute mutual wisecracking. She and Buzz head off to her bungalow so he can make a call. When he hesitates momentarily, she stands in the pouring rain in her slinky outfit and looks back at him, taunting him playfully: "What's the matter? Scared?" She flashes a winsome smile and turns on her heel, an invitation no red-blooded male could resist (just as I couldn't resist that period term, sorry!) Unfortunately, Veronica Lake never gets quite such a seductive moment in this film. Anyone who knows Chandler's bio will appreciate why he will have identified far more closely with Helen's character than with any other in the drama.A typically underplayed Chandler one-liner crops up when Eddie learns from concerned business partner Leo that his beloved ex, Joyce (Lake), has left a message saying she's quit town 'to save money on flowers' as obviously, she was receiving too many of Eddie's signature blue dahlias…Eddie (morosely): "She could have told me that herself." Leo: "Maybe she figured it would sound worse, coming from me."And Buzz's interplay down at the station house with the old cop is priceless, too.An imperfect film written by an imperfect man, sure, but with enough fine moments to satisfy any Chandler aficionado.

A film noir starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, scripted by Raymond Chandler, sounds right up my street. And so it mostly proved, with a murder mystery, femme fatales, tough-talking cops and lots of rain, shadows and fist-fights.Ladd is the conquering war hero with the faltering home life. Demobbed with his two Air Force buddies, one cool and sensible, the other hot-headed and traumatised, he returns to his home (actually a hotel suite) only to find his floozy wife boozing and schmoozing it up with a smooth night-club owner. They argue and are overheard by the hotel's seedy house-detective who later plays both ends in a blackmail scandal when the wife ends up dead and Ladd's Johnny Morrison character goes on the run.While some of the writing seems rushed (the identity of the murderer for one thing plays against everything the film has been leading up to) and unnecessarily padded (when Ladd is kidnapped and taken to a run-down hotel by a couple of cheap crooks), there's still a lot to like. The dialogue and even the plotting may not be the very best of Chandler, but it's still hard-boiled enough. I liked the direction too even if it lacked the verve of the best noir film-makers. A big plus was the acting, Ladd is convincingly laconic and William Bendix is very good as his unhinged war-buddy. I also liked the actors playing the two untiring cops and Howard DaSilva as the super-slick club-owner who shows no upset at all about the violent death of the woman with whom he was having an affair and is soon chasing after the glamorous, icy ex-wife he never got over played by Lake.There's a neat dare I say Chandleresque irony in the plotting as Ladd and Lake pair off (if very coincidentally) just as their own wife and husband did before them. I thought Lake's character a bit contrived but that she did well with what she was given.As I indicated earlier, the denouement is a let-down, but I still got a kick from this tough and seamy little story, well gratifying my regular noir-fix.

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)