Devil in a Blue Dress: Crossing the Line

Devil in a Blue Dress explicitly confronts the racialized implications of classic noir’s dichotomy between polite society and dark, shadowy underworlds. Its social critique is brutally honest and sharply targeted; race is both the organizing principle of its power structure and its central mystery. By revisiting the period in which noir originated and making this story about Black people’s quest for equality following World War II, Mosley and Franklin illustrate just how conditional Black people’s freedom was, more than eighty years after the Emancipation Proclamation but still roughly a decade away from the acceleration of the civil rights movement and the passing of any concrete legislation to protect those rights. They depict the overt racism that was acceptable at that time and also expose the specifically racial nature of the structural inequities that classic noirs such as Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep, and Sunset Boulevard—driven by more psychological motivations—merely gesture at.

Race is why Easy lost his job as an airplane mechanic. It’s at the heart of his interactions with Dewitt Albright (a sinister Tom Sizemore), who hires Easy to locate Daphne and enjoys reminding him of the racial power dynamic looming over their exchanges. And it’s the reason for the risk Easy knows he’s taking by sneaking into the whites-only section of the Ambassador Hotel for his first meeting with Daphne. But the film speaks to the era in which it was created as well as to the one it depicts. Devil in a Blue Dress is a story about an era of strict parameters for Black people’s freedom; it was adapted for the screen during an overdue period of growth in Black cinema, and at a time when Black people generally had more autonomy. Even so, Black people were still constrained by very distinct socioeconomic obstacles, in Hollywood as in the rest of society. “I love film noir,” Franklin told the New York Times in 1995, “but this film is really social realism married to film noir.” 

Albright is the perfect threatening presence. He’s untrustworthy, smirking like he knows more than Easy does—and because he feels like he owns him. He knows he can do whatever he pleases (for example, breaking into Easy’s house and helping himself to a sandwich) because he’s the white man who is paying Easy. But in between shit-eating grins are intimidation tactics punctuated with racism and unpredictable outbreaks of violence. Albright is the kind of live-wire character that Sizemore specializes in, but he is outgunned by Raymond “Mouse” Alexander—by far the most electric character in Devil in a Blue Dress, thanks to Don Cheadle. Mouse is Easy’s friend from Houston whom he recruits when he needs muscle—a job that Mouse, with his gold teeth, short fuse, and homicidal tendencies, is always down for. In one of the great breakout performances of the decade, Cheadle (who had also appeared in Franklin’s AFI thesis film, Punk) imbues Mouse with a sense of humor and unnerving volatility: he’ll murder you in cold blood—in his Sunday best. Not content to simply wrangle scenes away from Washington, Cheadle leaves an indelible mark on the film, delivering its best line with blunt practicality: “If you ain’t want him killed, why’d you leave him with me?”

Franklin has said that Mouse was absent from an early draft of the script that Mosley had written for a major studio. Despite the mercurial character’s prominence in Devil in a Blue Dress (he would also appear in later Easy Rawlins novels), the studio had wanted to combine him and Easy to make the latter a more take-charge figure. This exhibited a fundamental misunderstanding of both characters’ purpose in the narrative. Easy’s trepidation comes from his inexperience; he stumbles into being a private investigator and becomes more assertive only as he realizes what he’s up against. His aversion to violence is tied to his trauma from the war, and to his desire to live respectably. Mouse, on the other hand, has no such reservations or desires. This makes him a wild card but effective, because he appears when Easy needs him most. 

Beals portrays Daphne as a woman who will attempt everything from seduction to blackmail, sometimes in the same scene, to get what she wants. The truth about her heritage and motivation reveals that, on the surface, she and Easy want similar things. They just have different approaches. As a half-Creole woman passing for white, Daphne understands that her presentation grants her access to a new life. (Beals’s own experience—her father was Black, and her mother is Irish American—informs the rich duality of her performance.) She and Easy both seek upward mobility in the ways that are available to them: Being engaged to a wealthy white man has exposed Daphne to a previously unattainable lifestyle. Meanwhile, Easy’s cherished house and Cadillac are status symbols showing that he has done well for himself, all things considered. The two of them—Easy having come from Texas and Daphne from Louisiana—are representative of the many Black people who migrated to Los Angeles from that part of the country during the forties. Both crave a legitimacy that is obstructed by racism, which Daphne mistakenly believes she can circumvent. The secret of her race is the dirt that Terell has on Carter. And even after she leverages his silence, Carter still rebuffs her. Easy, whose cynicism mounts throughout the film, has the more clearheaded viewpoint: “’Cause even though we had fought a war to keep the world free, the color line in America worked both ways. And even a rich white man like Todd Carter was afraid to cross it.” Daphne’s unique position gives her more depth than the average femme fatale. Passing is a method of survival, which adds more context to her actions than most noir would allow. The overlapping forms of discrimination she faces as a Black woman make the death of her ideal cut even deeper.

The birth of Easy Rawlins as a bona fide private investigator coincides with the death of his own American dream. How could he go back to working a regular job after the experiences he has in Devil in a Blue Dress? His venture into entrepreneurship isn’t a testament to his drive or masculinity; it is his best option after a life-threatening confrontation with the immovable force of racism. Franklin’s film isn’t merely Chinatown painted Black; it’s a taut story about Black people’s ongoing struggle to belong and a gem that shines on noir’s possibilities with race front and center: the beauty of cinema juxtaposed with the ugliness of the world.