Film Notes: L.A. Confidential

L.A. Confidential (1997) film notes by Tova Gannana for the L.A. Noir: Shadows in Paradise series, presented by Greg Olson Productions. The series runs through November 2025 at SIFF Cinema Uptown. 

There’s LA, and then there’s Los Angeles. There are the streets named after the famous, and then there are entire districts scapegoated by the police. There are those who get off the bus destined for greatness, whose lives will be made into movies; and those destined for disappointment, whose names none but a handful will remember. Most of us have never been to Los Angeles, but through our TV and cinema, we often visit LA.

It was popular in the 1940’s to give Hollywood starlets nicknames: Lana Turner was “the sweater girl”, Betty Grable was “the girl with the million-dollar legs”, Carole Landis was “the ping girl” and also “the chest”. Young women were members of fan clubs for their favorite movie stars; they wore their nails and lips in “Victory Red”. Those with ambition moved West in search of fame. “It’s like someone took America by the East Coast and shook it, and all the normal girls managed to hang on,” Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey JR) complains about LA women in the movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (1995). Tuner, Grable, and Landis made their way to LA from out of state, Turner and Landis wrote autobiographies, all three were blonds, as was Veronica Lake, who hailed from Florida, made a hairstyle iconic, wrote a memoir, and died of hepatitis at age 50 in Burlington, VT from too much drink. By her telling, Lake led an unhappy life in LA even though she was a star in Hollywood.

LA Confidential (1997) is a film with the city as principal. Like the objective in the board game “Chutes and Ladders”, the characters make their way up and down, precariously hanging on each rung, waiting for the right roll, the next turn, some future luck. In the language and attitude of 1953 – the time period in which the film is set – law and order means police suspects are Black and Latino men, prostitutes are called whores, and homosexuality is illegal, spoken of with derision.

The film opens with a voice over by gossip columnist Sid Hudgens (Danny Devito): “Come to Los Angeles where the sun shines bright, the beaches are wide and inviting, and the orange groves stretch far as the eye can see. There are jobs aplenty and land is cheap. Every working man can have his own house, and inside every house a happy all-American family. You can have all this and who knows? You can even be discovered, become a movie star, or at least see one. Life is good in Los Angeles. It’s paradise on earth.” The 1945 hit song “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” plays in the background over archival footage. But Hudgens soon lets out a laugh and goes on to tell of all the negatives that accompany these blissful images: “That’s what they tell you anyway, because they’re selling an image. They’re selling it through radio, movies, and television.” This break in narrative feels more late 1990s than early 1950s, as if the film is commenting on itself as it introduces itself to the audience. Inez Soto (Marisol Padilla Sánchez) is an LA native, while Lynn Bracken (Kim Basinger) is a transplant. Both women are treated badly by men: Inez is kidnapped and raped, tied naked and bloody to a bed. She’s rescued by LAPD Officer Bud White (Russell Crowe), who also comes to Lynn’s aid and soon after becomes her lover. Inez is in only two scenes, while Lynn is in many. Inez wears her brown hair long in a side braid; Lynn wears hers dyed blonde in a peek-a-boo hair style a la Veronica Lake. We don’t know what profession Inez is in, but we know that Lynn works in a clandestine prostitution ring led by Pierce Patchett (David Strathairn), who’s involved in running drugs and is also backing a highway project linking Santa Monica to LA.

LA and Los Angeles are like Yin and Yang. “This is the city, Los Angeles, California. They make movies here. I live here. Sometimes I think that gives me the right to criticize movies that depict my city,” Thom Andersen begins his essay film Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003). Fifteen minutes into his nearly three-hour-long film, Andersen shares his major gripe with Hollywood: “People blame all sorts of things on the movies. For me it’s their betrayal of their native city. Maybe I’m wrong, but I blame them for the custom of abbreviating the city’s name to LA.”

If Lynn is in LA, then Inez is in Los Angeles. When Officer White questions Lynn about murdered prostitute “cut to look like Rita Hayworth” Susan Lefferts’ (Amber Smith) connection to pimp Pierce Patchett, Lynn’s answer includes herself: “Pierce meets people. Sue came on a bus with dreams of Hollywood, and this is how they turned out. Thanks to Pierce, we still get to act a little.”

Inez confesses to Detective Lieutenant Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) as to why she lied to police about the exact time that her rapists left her: “I wanted them dead. Will anyone care they raped a Mexican girl from Boyle Heights if they hadn’t killed those white people at the Nite Owl? I did what I had to do for justice.” Turns out that corrupt LAPD Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell) was responsible for the Nite Owl Cafe killing, not the three young Black men who raped Inez. Thus her lie helped Captain Smith justify killing them rather than bringing them in a second time, though he’d placed the blame on them before Inez was found. In LA Confidential, the LAPD wants to be seen as the good guy on a TV show, with each case wrapped up quickly and to applause. Captain Smith cares about money and personal power. He does not uphold what all those TV show good cops do: following the law and providing all citizens with order.

Gary Indiana’s critique of Los Angeles Plays Itself closes with, “It’s true Los Angeles and Hollywood aren’t the same thing. On the other hand, LA wouldn’t be much of anything without Hollywood.” The first time Lynn appears onscreen, she is wearing a hooded cloak with white trim. Seen from behind, she’s a shape, a black hole; when she turns, we see her face. Officer White is looking at her. Later he tells her, “You look better than Veronica Lake.”

Inez is photographed for the newspapers leaving the hospital in a wheelchair. Behind her stands Detective Lieutenant Exley. They represent what the city wants projected: justice. Lynn leaves Los Angeles for her hometown in Arizona. Shedding LA, she cuts her hair short for her voyage back.