Devil in a Blue Dress

A film noir set in Los Angeles in 1948. Easy Rawlins is back from the war and has been laid off from an aircraft plant. He has a mortgage payment to make. A white man offers him work: find a missing woman. The job looks simple and quickly connects to a mayoral election, blackmail and murder. The difference is in how it shows the city. The narrative takes place in Black Los Angeles: clubs, barber shops, house parties. In genre cinema up to then these were not even background. Race sits inside the plot: that Easy cannot enter certain places, that he is stopped by the police, and that he has to use a white man's name to gather information are all part of the narrative's machinery. The source is Walter Mosley's novel; Easy Rawlins is the lead of the author's long-running series. Denzel Washington plays Easy. Don Cheadle plays Mouse, and the part brought him recognition; the character comes forward enough to unbalance the film. Carl Franklin directed. A strong example of its kind for anyone who likes noir and period crime. A warning about the plot: the connections are given fast and the film does not care to explain.