Thematically and elementally,
The Blue Dahlia (1946) is an exemplary pillar in the Film Noir historical cannon. The hero isn’t a detective, and he isn’t thwarted by a femme fatale, but director George Marshall’s mystery encapsulates the war-time shift into darker narration – the feeling that our Americana had been irreversibly corrupted, that our world had transformed into a place capable of global genocide and atomic force, and that an oily darkness was slowly burrowing a hole deep into our collective souls.
If that sounds dramatic, it’s meant to – violence has always been a part of human existence, but never had it been so widely and transformatively witnessed and digested. And at the forefront of taste-making entertainment for the increasingly restless masses, Hollywood both reflected and capitalized on that growing dramatic conscience.
