The Black Dahlia
Reviewed by Justin Bielawa
October 01, 2006

It's taken close to twenty years for James Ellroy's novel The Black Dahlia to finally hit screens; it had been optioned in the late 1980s but never came to fruition until this year. Directed by the ever-sensationalist Brian De Palma, the movie's disappointing box office is seemingly as unsolvable as the brutal murder the film is centered on.

The score by Mark Isham is a slick, smokey jazz-infused score. Led by the composer's own trumpet playing, the score automatically makes one remember any number of classic film noir scores from decades gone by. "The Black Dahlia – The Zoot Suit Riots" introduces a singular sombre motif before a wild brass-and-drum stomp spectacularly intervenes. It's influences are obvious and many - Bernard Herrmann's Taxi Driver, Jerry Goldsmith's L.A. Confidential and even some of that off-kilter big bang music Elliot Goldenthal is famous for can be heard all over the album. Isham paints in wide strokes and the score is better for it.

The composer draws from a number of old film noir stereotypes: the piano-built love theme in "Dwight and Kay", the detective work of Blanchard and Bleichert in "At Norton and Coliseum" and "The Dahlia", the brass-heavy "Death at the Olympic". However, none of these are propped up by cliched writing or arrangements; under Isham's pen, what is old is new again. There are a few moments where I'd swear the score was so acute in it's writing that it had to simply be a re-recording of some long lost Alex North work I've never heard.

Highlights on the score include "Men Who Feed on Others" with it's building Elfmanesque beat and the introverted "No Other Way", with Isham's trumpet in deep mourning with some gentle assistance from the orchestra.

The Black Dahlia is a phenomenal work, a minor classic in the making. While the score may not be attached to the most successful of movies - film score fans know that more often than not the best music comes from the least likely sources. This is one of the albums you should not miss in 2006.

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