Close but no fedora

Rating: 8/10 (14 January 2013)

I discovered James Ellroy's L.A. Quartet series of novels, The Black Dahlia (1987), The Big Nowhere (1988), L.A. Confidential (1990), and White Jazz (1992) while living in Montana after a sort of cold turkey I experienced when I had devoured all of the Dashiell Hammett's, James M. Cain's, Ross MacDonald's, and Raymond Chandler's I could at that time get my hands on. They were all great reads, but unfortunately, this was before I really began to appreciate Film Noir and get a stylistic visual from those series of films of the world Ellroy was depicting.
Of course I had seen "The Maltese Falcon", "The Big Sleep", "Double Indemnity" and "Murder My Sweet" but they were made before the neo- realistic phase of the Noir series so they didn't really count. L.A. Confidential according to Curtis Hanson was an attempt to depict '50's LA but not in a stylistically noir way, "no long shadows" so they consciously decided to show the '50's looking forward towards the future rather than highlight Film Noir. He needn't have bothered, the widescreen alone effectively negates the claustrophobic noir stylistic. Noirs were mostly about urban alienation and obsession, the majority of urban topography is vertical which suited the 3:4 aspect ratio well.
But, what L..A Confidential does is incorporate Los Angeles' overall elongated horizontal urban structure into an effective neo noir. A plus is that the film even incorporates more actual 50's LA locations and interiors than for example the film Chinatown (story line circa 1930's) did, though this could be for the simple fact that way less 30's LA was still extant in 1973 than 50's LA in 1996. What locations they didn't have they reconstructed and the blend is seamless. The film looks that good.
whats not to like:
However one glaring WTF omission is what I like to call the "romance of the fedora" aside from the DeVitos' character Sid Hudgens and James Cromwell's Dudley Smith, fedoras are absent, missing in action. It just doesn't feel quite right, it would be sort of on par with making a Western without cowboy hats, the characters look naked. -1
OK I can understand somewhat where Hanson is coming from in a commentary he states that he wanted to make a film that didn't feel like a period piece because he was concerned about getting funding, but you could at least have had 1/4 of the cast wear fedoras and one of the leads. The Author James Ellroy on his commentary on the DVD for Crime Wave "Sterling Hayden-- That is my Bud White. That is my Bud White! "F" Russell Crowe in 'L A Confidential.' I mean he was okay, but he's a shrimpy little sh-t Bud White as Bud Whites go. Sterling Hayden is the real deal. Look at this! He's not even acting. Look at that hat!" 'nuff said."
The Lynn Bracken/Bud White romance wasn't all that convincing didn't seem to be any chemistry there it needed more time to get fleshed out at least.
If this film really wanted to be a neo noir masterpiece it didn't have confidence or the nerve to push that envelope, Hanson's reluctance to embrace Noir and go with the safe money gives us at the denouement the happy Hollywood ending. The bad guys are all dead and 2/3 of the good guys live. -1 final score 8/10