DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS
A film review by Ralph Benner
Copyright 1996 Ralph Benner
About an hour into Carl Franklin's black noir DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS, costume designer Sharen Davis appears to have discovered for Denzel Washington a style that's not new but is rejuvenated and welcomed: in suspenders over a white sleeveless T-shirt, Washington brings to what is usually a slob dress code a genuine smolder. His beefy contours and conscious swagger feed the burn, as does his skin, which viewed through Tak Fujimoto's sandy-colored photography sometimes looks burnt-orange. In the late 60s and early 70s, there was great hope in Billy Dee Williams to break through the barriers, and in a few quarters he has -- if you accept the STAR WARS stuff -- but he never really got to the promised land. Bad scripts and personal demons notwithstanding, I think it's the superfly hair that prevented larger contact: it was often too greasy or greasy-curly or cut so exaggeratedly that his charisma took a nose dive; his slimy overdose made you feel unclean. For some black beauties, ethnicity can be stunning -- Lena Horne and Iman, for example, or when not reeking of camp, Whitney Houston. But for bl concession is required, and it hasn't hurt Denzel one bit. After all, thanks to his predominantly white audience, he's a bona fide super star. It's worth noting that, in looking over receipts, it's also the white breaders who kept turning out for WAITING TO EXHALE long after blacks deserted the box office. One of the discomforting ironies of this may be that whites are more receptive than black men to the argument the movie was invecting.
The majority of the black audience didn't show up for DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS, and not many others showed up, either. Despite good reviews, the box office fizzle is both understandable -- it was released during the Simpson fiasco -- and regrettable. The movie seems tailored for Washington's comely appeal, and while it's there, it isn't used to the extent most probably wish it had. As you're watching, you flash on Lawrence Kasdan's BODY HEAT, a movie it doesn't take after except in potential for sexuality; you prepare yourself for sizzle. It's definitely set up for it: opening in the L.A. summer of 1948, Washington's Easy, a W.W.II vet-unemployed machinist, needs some quick cash to save his house from being foreclosed and he's asked by a typical hood to hunt down Jennifer Beals' Daphne Monet, who has a "predilection for jazz, pigs feet and black meat." When Easy first meets Daphne, a chat about weapons commences and he asks her, "What do you prefer to use as your weapon?" and she invites, "Why don't you search me and find out?" Need I say more? I'm going to have to: finally recovering from the imbecilic FLASHDANCE, Beals's handicap isn't only that she doesn't bounce the mattress with Washington, she's also a repellent mixture of Liza Minnelli out of NEW YORK, NEW YORK and Dixie Carter; you start thinking maybe it's a blessing Washington doesn't bag her. Her performance above complaint, yet she's not enough of a charge for Washington; in a blue bath robe, holding a cigarette, her shoulders drooping inward (is it the pads?), she's a great granddaughter to the 40s dames of the damned but the generational distance allows for a different noirish tack: there's nothing hateful about her to love. (In this movie, it's the whites you hate.)
In most critics' estimation, Denzel Washington still seems to take second place to Morgan Freeman as America's best black actor. Where Freeman's insistently subtle, a giant of modulation and technique, Washington's a 5th of vigor -- a passionate dynamo. Since STREET SMART and DRIVING MISS DAISY, Freeman's learned enormously that the camera detects his notorious cool and he's re-channelled it so that it emits its power in a subterranean way that sneaks up on you and before you know it you're overwhelmed -- like in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. Washington has this knowledge about the camera almost instinctually -- he's virtually born to be unleashed on the screen. Without overdoing it, Washington spills over the brim; he shakes things up because he's excited about his love of acting, his love of the territory that is movie acting. He's not sloppy or egotistical in commanding his realm, as is the great bad Al Pacino; though he isn't the center of PHILADELPHIA, his egalitarian brio makes him its real champion -- its Black Knight. In DEVIL, he's hero, but not solely: Easy would be an obit without gold-toothed Mouse, played with warpy morals by Don Cheadle. Washington's the matinee idol director Franklin wants him to be -- and a generous one: Easy gives Coretta (Lisa Nicole Carson, a double for TV's Jackee) what she's hankering for. Right now, no other American actor -- black, white or any other color from the rainbow -- has all the ingredients to produce a new kind of alchemy on screen. When he gets to act opposite a woman with equal star magnitude, someone like Michelle Pfeiffer, the explosion should be magical -- a close encounter of the most erotic kind.
To keep the budget down, Franklin's economized on the atmospherics -- though Gary Frutkoff's design is more than adequate. What isn't satisfactory is the score by Elmer Bernstein, who's snoozing in the orchestra pit, and the classic recordings -- including T-Bone Walker's "Westside Baby," Jimmy Witherspoon's "Ain't Nobody's Business," Ellington's "HY-AH-SU" and "Maybe I Should Change My Ways," Lucienne Boyer's "Parlez Moi D'Amour," Frank Loesser's "On a Slow Boat to China," Thelonious Monk's "Round Midnight" -- don't quite get us deep into the Zapata-smoked, jazzy, illegal club ambiance. Had the selections been more carnal and rhythmic, they might have done a lot to shore up the missing heat between Washington and Beals. Doing his own adaptation from the Walter Mosley novel, Franklin keeps things moving along rapidly. As the story and secrets unfold, he sticks to the plot details, wasting little time in extracurriculars or in efforts to outfox us, and just as we're wondering what's to become of Easy, who has blood on his hands, the noiry summation is explicitly conveyed. What's a little unsettling about the movie is the question raised at the end about ratting on your friends. Coincidental, what ricochets in the mind are that recent infamous L.A. trial and the brother of the Unabomber. DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS -- a misnomer of a title -- is caught in a time trap: it may not find its larger appreciating audience until one of those murderers, who like Easy probably "laughed a long time" about the verdict of events, finds his phantom killers. Let's hope Washington maintains his self-respect by continuing to reject offers of millions to play him. Being Easy, he can; being susceptible to temptation, it won't be.
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