The actors are not to incriminate himself

Cut in two, emptied of its blood, slit mouth, smashed skull. Betty Short, twenty-three years, is not in beauty this January 15, 1947, when his body is discovered, or what remains, at the corner of 39th Street and Norton Avenue, Los Angeles. Hundreds of police officers are on the investigation. Without conclusive results. Sixty years later, a thesis is the ramp: Betty would have been wound up by mobster Bugsy Siegel, on order of Norman Chandler, the pattern of the "Los Angeles Times". He had a liaison with Betty and the étourdie was pregnant. This version is that of Don Wolfe in his exciting investigation: "the Black Dahlia case: the mob, the mogul and the murder that shocked America" (Albin Michel). Betty Short was always dressed in black and she was wearing a dahlia in the hair. She dreamed to be a name in the film, she has been a case of forensic medicine under the name of "Black Dahlia".

The American writer James Ellroy wrote in 1987 a polar, "Black Dahlia", reprinted these days by shores. A masterpiece. By its construction, its morbidity. And biographical character. The day of the discovery of the body of her mother, raped and murdered, the young James Ellroy (10 years) received from his father a book on the Black Dahlia case. "Betty Short and my mother did that", he wrote.

The film was expected. The book cult of James Ellroy withstand the test of the 7th art Brian de Palma, who was not satisfied with his previous two films ("Mission to Mars", 2000, "Femme fatale", 2002), was it to find the vein of "Scarface" Popular actress, Scarlett Johansson, will be the equal of Lauren Bacall or, in the roundness of Marylin These three questions, unfortunately, three negative responses. James Ellroy, sincere or elegant, has declared: "It is a brilliantly designed and carried out this long novel contraction." "From the formal point of view, it is very beautiful, more that I could have imagined" it is not satisfied. Brian de Palma directed a beautiful glossy. The Los Angeles in the 1940s, cited the wildest dreams and forfeiture, is truer than nature. And yet the film was shot in Bulgaria! But the wonders of the Director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond ("Encounters of the third type", "travel at the end of hell") are not sufficient to represent the film. The actors are not to incriminate himself. Scarlett Johansson is not bad, but it was hoped a diva. Hilary Swank, femme fatale, proves that it is not locked in the role of boxeuse of "Million Dollar Baby", by Clint Eastwood. Aaron Eckhart and Josh Hartnett in the role of the two boxing prefers police who are investigating the murder of Elizabeth Short, are convincing. But the darkness of the book, the fragility of the characters, their suicidal and manipulative side are passed to the trap. The film is lost in the meanders of the investigation. It would have taken in Brian de Palma an Ariane to get out of this maze.