Devil in a Blue Dress

Presented by guest programmer and VTIFF member Ravi Venkataraman
Postwar film noir becomes a powerful vehicle to explore America’s racial injustices in Carl Franklin’s tense, atmospheric debut. Adapted from the hard-boiled best-seller by Walter Mosley—the first in a series of mystery novels following gumshoe Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins—Devil in a Blue Dress is told through the eyes of people whose perspectives are usually ignored, turning noir’s propensity for delving into tales from the margins on its head.
Denzel Washington has charisma to burn as Rawlins, an ex-GI prowling Central Avenue, the social epicenter of Black Los Angeles, who sees a chance to make some quick cash when he’s recruited to find the missing lover of a wealthy mayoral candidate, only to find himself embroiled in murder, political intrigue, and a scandal that crosses the treacherous color lines of a segregated society.
Featuring combustible work from Jennifer Beals, Tom Sizemore, and especially Don Cheadle, in his breakout role as Rawlins’ cheerfully trigger-happy sidekick, dynamic direction from Franklin, and humid photography by Tak Fujimoto (Badlands, The Silence of the Lambs), this stylish mystery both channels and subverts classic noir tropes as it exposes the bitter disillusionment underlying the American dream.