In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based on where my interests lead me and what’s available from my local public library.
Every now and then a film comes out that seems to have everything going for it—great cast, accomplished technical work, top-notch direction, popular source material—and yet it never quite seems to catch fire. Carl Franklin’s Devil in a Blue Dress is one of those films, and while it’s definitely worth watching, there’s also something lacking that keeps it from being a wholly satisfying experience.
The central character in Devil in a Blue Dress, adapted by Franklin from a novel by Walter Mosley, is Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins (Denzel Washington), an ex-GI trying to make a go of it in 1948 Los Angeles. After Easy is laid off from his job, his friend and bartender Joppy (Mel Winkler) mentions there might be some money to be made from meeting with a white P.I., DeWitt Albright (Tom Sizemore). Needing money to pay his mortgage (one of the characters states directly that Easy is a homeowner, just like the white folks), he takes the gig against his better judgment. His task is to track down a white women, Daphne Monet (Jennifer Beals), who seems to prefer the company of Black people (it’s put less delicately in the film). There’s a political angle as well: Daphne was engaged to mayoral candidate Todd Carter (Terry Kinney), who has since dropped out of the race.
Easy’s journey takes him deep into the world of Black Los Angeles, and the depiction of this milieu is one of the best things about the film. While films featuring minority characters often treat them as if they exist out of space and time, Devil in a Blue Dress places Easy firmly within a community that, like most communities, is full of all kinds of people doing all kinds of things. The white world exists at the borders of this community and sometimes intrudes into it (racist teenagers and cops both play a part in the plot), but the separateness of the two communities is part of the reason Easy was hired in the first place.
Easy’s old friend Mouse (Don Cheadle) appears exactly when he needs to, demonstrating that people who live on the far side of the law are sometimes necessary to ensure the survival of those who try to stick to the straight and narrow. There’s also some business about a missing letter, which also turns out to have some significance in the mayoral race, and an intended bombshell about Daphne that’s more of a letdown than a big reveal.
As is often the case with films that have much going for them but also lack that certain something that turns storytelling into magic, critics loved Devil in a Blue Dress but audiences not so much. The film’s worldwide gross approximately equaled its budget, while you need 2-3 times that much to be counted a financial success), and awards recognition went mainly to supporting actor Don Cheadle and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto.
It’s hard to diagnose exactly what is missing with Devil in a Blue Dress when there is so much that is good, but I have two candidate explanations in mind: the source material and the emphasis on beautifully recreated period detail. I’ve read a number of Mosley’s Easy Rawlins books, and while they’re always enjoyable, with rich character development and location detail, the plotting is not the greatest and the secrets to be revealed not all that surprising. Mosley is sort of a reverse Agatha Christie in this regard: while she was noted for intricate and clever plots populated by characters often little more than cardboard cutouts, he’s all about rich character and milieu depictions but plots that feel more like homework. The problem with the latter approach is that the payoff is usually disappointing, and that’s an even bigger problem in a movie than it is in a book.
With regard to period detail, Devil in a Blue Dress reminds me of Jack Clayton’s 1974 film version of The Great Gatsby, a stunningly beautiful film (not least due to the presence of Mia Farrow and Robert Redford) which made a lot of noise in its day but has always seemed to me to be oddly inert, as if the essence of the story was buried under so many layers of gilt and lacquer that you never really feel anything about it. Oddly enough, The Great Gatsby was a box office success but got mixed reviews, the opposite fate of Devil in a Blue Dress, but untangling the possible reasons for those differing outcomes is well beyond the scope of this review. | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 1995
Technical details: 101min.; color; screen ratio 1.85:1; English.
Edition reviewed: Blu-ray
Extras: Audio commentary by director Carl Franklin; video conversation between actor Don Cheadle and Carl Franklin; video conversation between author Walter Mosley and screenwriter Attica Locke; conversation between Carl Franklin and film historian Eddie Muller; Don Cheadle’s screen test; the film’s trailer. The Criterion web site mentions an essay by critic Julian Kimble, but that was missing from the library copy I reviewed.
Fun Fact: Don Cheadle originally did not want to audition for the role of Mouse, as he thought he was too young (the actor is 10 years younger than Denzel Washington, although you wouldn’t guess it from this film).
Parting Thought: There’s a Mexican connection in the novel that is less developed in the film, aside from an unusual brand of cigarettes. Why was that clue included in the film in but the rest left out?
