Better than average performances from Alan Ladd and Howard da Silva, and solid performances from the supporting cast keep this film noir afloat. Plot-wise there's a bit too much coincidence. Ladd's character, Johnny Morrison, is on the run as a suspect in the murder of his wife. He gets picked up by Veronica Lake, who coincidentally happens to be married to Ladd's wife's lover. Neither of them realizes until after they've fallen in love, even though Ladd could have figured it out easily if he had bothered to ask her full name. It's a bit much...and while, their spouses were no saints. It seems a bit cavalier that neither Ladd nor Lake seem to be upset about their dead spouses at the end. We can somewhat see a character because the acting is good but there's no character development in the writing.I read that they rushed the filming because Ladd was entering the Army. Plus, the ending was changed from Buzz being the killer to 'Dad' Newell due to the Navy's concerns that a veteran would be portrayed as a killer. It does show in the movie. Some extra time could have fleshed out the characters more. And, the original ending would have held more emotional weight.It's a shame, the movie is solid but would have been better if the actors had more to work with.

Recently discharged from the United States Navy, Johnny Morrison arrives back in his home town, Hollywood, eager to be reunited with his wife Helen. He is in for a shock. During his absence serving in the South Pacific, Helen has become a heavy drinker and hard, brassy good-time girl. Johnny also discovers that she is having an affair with a nightclub owner named Eddie Harwood. (The "Blue Dahlia" of the title is the name of Harwood's nightclub). Johnny decides to leave Helen, and when she is murdered shortly afterwards Johnny becomes the prime suspect.Of course, Johnny is not the killer. Although the film was released in 1946, it was shot the previous year while the war was still being fought, and in 1945 there was no way in which Hollywood was going to make a returning war hero a murderer. Aided by his old Navy buddies Buzz Wanchek and George Copeland and by Harwood's estranged wife Joyce, he goes on the run to try and expose the real killer. It then gets a lot more complicated, but this is only to be expected given that the script was written by Raymond Chandler. (This was Chandler's first original screenplay).For most of the film the audience have no idea who the killer really is; his or her identity is only revealed at the very end. In fact, for most of the time during filming the cast and director George Marshall did not know who the culprit is. Even Chandler did not know. The reason for this strange state of affairs was that the studio, Paramount, were anxious to get the film completed as soon as possible, fearing that its star Alan Ladd, who had briefly served in the army before being discharged on medical grounds, might be conscripted again. (In the event this never happened). As a result, they started shooting without a finished screenplay and Chandler continued working on it while filming of the early scenes was taking place.Chandler had particular difficulty in writing the ending in which the murderer is revealed. He evidently rejected the most obvious solution, that the killer is Harwood, possibly because it seemed too obvious. His original idea was that Buzz, who is suffering from mental disturbances after being wounded in the war, would turn out to have killed Helen in a fit of madness, but Paramount, at the insistence of the Navy, vetoed this suggestion. (As I said, in 1945 Hollywood was never going to make a returning war hero a murderer). Chandler, who was drinking heavily at the time, therefore had to come up with an alternative solution, something that was not achieved without a good deal of anguish.I wouldn't class "The Blue Dahlia" as one of the great films noirs- it is not quite on a par with something like "The Big Sleep" or "Gilda", to take two other films from the same year- but given the rather chaotic conditions under which it was produced, it is surprising that it is as good as it is. Ladd gives a good performance as Johnny, as does William Bendix as the tormented Buzz, although Veronica Lake, in her third appearance with Ladd, does not make quite such an impression as she did in some of the others. (Chandler took a strong dislike to Lake, possibly because she had never previously heard of him, calling her "Moronica". Lake seemed to have a talent for making enemies, which explains in part why her career, although at times an impressive one, was also a short one).As often with noir, the plot is perhaps more complex than it needs to be, but this is the sort of film which depends less upon plot than it does upon atmosphere. It is a film about returning war heroes, made just before the end of the war and released just after it, yet the mood of the film is far from heroic or triumphant. Johnny, George and Buzz have put their lives on the line for their country, but the country they are returning to is shown here as a corrupt, seedy land of cheap criminals and hoodlums. Although there is a "happy" ending in that Johnny and Buzz's innocence is eventually vindicated, this does not altogether overcome the rather sour pessimism which is the dominant mood of this film, a mood which it shares with some other films noirs from the period. This pessimism contrasts oddly with the triumphant optimism with which many greeted the return of peace in 1945, but it also perhaps served as a necessary corrective to it. 7/10

War hero Alan Ladd returns home to find out his wife (Doris Dowling) has been cheating on him with sleazy nightclub owner Howard DaSilva. When she ends up dead, Ladd is the chief suspect. Foxy Veronica Lake (DaSilva's estranged wife) helps him figure out who the real killer is. Full of eccentric dialog and MANY eccentric characters, George Marshall's noir classic is immensely entertaining with a very clever script by none other than Raymond Chandler. Ladd & Lake have dynamite chemistry and the supporting cast is first rate. Dowling is great as a bitchy barfly and Hugh Beaumont, Howard Freeman and William Bendix are in it too. Bendix steals the film as a very damaged war vet. The great cinematography is by Lionel Lindon.

The original story as written by Raymond Chandler had Buzz be the one who murdered Helen, but the Navy objected to a veteran being the killer, so the script was changed to make Dad the villain. I like the movie ending better anyway. We would have felt sorry for Buzz, and that would have been depressing. Much better to have Buzz be suspected on account of his war injury, and then have the unlikeable house detective be the murderer.Unfortunately, the proof that Buzz didn't do it is weak. First, Johnny gets Buzz fire a pistol at a match that he holds in his hand about ten feet away, with the bullet grazing the match just enough to light it up. No consideration is given to the fact that the bullet would continue to go past the match and through the wall, possibly killing someone in the next room.Even so, the point of the demonstration was to prove that Buzz was a crack shot. Helen was shot by a gun placed against her heart. So, Johnny argues, Buzz would not need to press the barrel of the gun against her body, owing to his marksmanship. But if a man is in a heated argument with a woman in a hotel room and decides to shoot her, he is going to shoot her at close range if she is standing right in front of him at the moment he decides to pull the trigger. He is not going to say to himself, "Wait a minute. I'm a marksman. I don't have to be this close. I need to go to the other side of the room to shoot her." Furthermore, jamming the gun against her heart before pulling the trigger is not a sign of poor marksmanship, but rather of anger and aggression. It makes the killing more personal. And in any event, even a poor shot would be able to hit a woman at several feet away, and Dad was an ex-cop, so he was probably a fair shot himself.Other than that, it is hard to understand why, at an earlier scene in the movie, Johnny would get mad when he finds out that Joyce is married to Eddie. She would have told him, but he didn't want to know her secrets. Moreover, he kept telling her that there was no future for the two of them. And in any event, she was just as much a victim of an unfaithful spouse as he was.These flaws aside, however, it remains a great film noir, with some of the best hard-boiled dialogue in the genre.