The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Blue Gardenia is a hit

I thought "The Blue Gardenia" was a great movie. I loved the acting. I loved the music. I loved the atmosphere. Anne Baxter is a personal favorite. She never disappoints. August 14, 2008

Fritz Lang, Anne Baxter, a fireplace poker and a blue gardenia...plus a cost-of-living lesson

Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia is not just a minor noir, it's a minor film. The story is so simple and linear, and the final revelation so ordinary, that it's difficult to get much involved. Except...and that's because Lang has put together the movie so professionally and with such craftsman-like assurance that it's difficult not to stick with it. The Blue Gardenia keeps moving and we keep watching.

Norah Larkin (Ann Baxter) is a telephone switchboard operator at West-Coast Telephone Company in Los Angeles. She rooms with her two best friends, also operators. There's Crystal Carpenter (Ann Southern), a wisecracking, sympathetic lady who always has a cigarette in her mouth, and Sally Ellis (Jeff Donnell), a friendly, mystery-reading young woman who could use a date now and then. Norah's fiancée, a man she loves dearly and to whom she is faithful, is a soldier in Korea. On her birthday she opens a letter from him, a letter she has been saving for a special moment. Turns out it's a "Dear Norah" letter and he tells her he's decided to marry someone else. Norah's world crashes around her. When successful painter of calendar girls and major lecher Harry Prebble calls (he had discovered Crystal's number), Norah impulsively pretends to be Crystal and accepts Harry's invitation to dinner. All she has to do is take a taxi to The Blue Gardenia.

When she arrives, Harry already has things well in hand. "Chinese peas," he tells the waiter before she arrives, "fried rice and Lobster Cantonese. Well, that's the dinner. The drinks...Polynesian Pearldivers...and don't spare the rum." While Norah is grateful not to be alone, Harry keeps ordering those Pearldivers and Nat Cole at the piano croons...
"Blue gardenia...now I'm alone with you
and I am also blue...
she has tossed us aside.
And like you, blue gardenia, once I was near her heart...
...love bloomed like a flower...
then the petals fell...
Blue gardenia...thrown to a passing breeze...
but pressed in my book of memories..."

Soon Norah is considerably more than tipsy and she's at Harry's apartment. He puts on a record of "Blue Gardenia," turns down the lights and starts getting way too physical. Norah is so woozy she can hardly see, but she finds a fireplace poker in her hand, swings and shatters a big mirror. She swings again, hits Harry and passes out. When she comes to she runs from Harry's apartment, makes her way home in the rain and can't remember much except the dinner. Then the newspaper headlines scream that Harry Prebble has been murdered. Hot on the case are the cops and Casey Mayo (Richard Conte), ace reporter on the Los Angeles Chronicle, "the peoples' favorite columnist." He's determined to find the woman who killed Prebble before the police do. Among the clues, a crushed blue gardenia at Harry's place, bought for the mysterious woman by Harry at The Blue Gardenia. Said the elderly, blind flower seller when she came to Prebble's table, "Good evening, sir. Would you like a blue gardenia for the lady? It's a specialty of the house. Aren't they pretty...?"

Will Norah be caught? Will Casey find love? Will Crystal make wry observations? Will the real killer turn out to be interesting, unexpected, startling? Well, no the last question.

This is Anne Baxter's movie. For me, that's more a drawback than an advantage. She was 29 when she made The Blue Gardenia but seems older. Baxter too often carried around with her an aura of well-bred graciousness. She spoke (and acted) with a carefully modulated voice. In The Blue Gardenia she gives the impression of one of those wealthy young matrons who live in the most exclusive of neighborhoods, not a young telephone operator with limited experience, natural warmth and real vulnerability. Baxter's great weakness as an actress, in my opinion, was too often appearing so earnest that the acting could be detected. This made her perfect as Eve Harrington in All About Eve (Two-Disc Special Edition). When she could tone it down, she could be most appealing, as in Yellow Sky.

In addition to the pleasure of Fritz Lang's craftsmanship, Richard Conte was an intriguing actor, Ann Southern is a joy even if she's playing an Ann Southern character; Richard Erdman as Casey Mayo's photographer adds his fine ability to read a line and be both likable and wry; Jeff Donnell, now forgotten, always made an appealing best friend in so many movies; and Raymond Burr, considerably slimmer than in his Perry Mason years, makes a memorable and sleazy Harry Prebble.

We even learn a little about the cost of living in Los Angeles in the early Fifties. Casey has met Norah in a diner. She wants to trust his offer of help, but she knows he's a newspaperman. Casey isn't quite sure if Norah is the Blue Gardenia murderer. They eat and they talk, but then it's time to leave. "How much do I owe you," Casey asks the counterman.

We listen enviously to the reply. "Two hamburgers and five coffees...three for you and two for the lady. That's $1.40, Mr. Mayo."

The DVD transfer looks fine. There are no extras and the movie starts as soon as you slip it in the player. If you hit "menu" the chapter stops will appear. July 13, 2008

Lang's weakest noir

The Blue Gardenia is a rather disappointing noir from Fritz Lang, and easily the weakest of his tabloid trilogy (Gardenia, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt and the superb While the City Sleeps). It lacks the guts to really go for the jugular and the set-up is pure production line stuff - watchable but forgettable, with Raymond Burr's seduction technique leaving the only lasting impression. It's hard to get excited by Kiino's DVD either - no extras and an acceptable but far from outstanding transfer. May 12, 2008

Good film, Bad transfer.

Performances by Anne Baxter and Raymond Burr and Fritz Lang's direction make this a top drawer noir. Unfortunately the transfer leaves an awful lot to be desired, especially when compared to recent releases of Fox and Warner noirs. While the source print is contrasty but clean, this transfer appears to have been made from an early D1 or D2 digital video master, early digital formats that predate current DVD mastering processes, resulting in a blocky, pixilated image much like watching the film through through a window screen. By putting an already compressed image (D1 master) through another round of compression (MPEG-2 for DVD), you get an image that's perpetually distracting, and un-film-like. This is not uncommon with many low-budget DVD releases, especially from the wild-frontier days of the shift from VHS to DVD. Thanks to TCM and The Critereon Collection, our expectations are much higher now, and this is a film that deserves better. March 21, 2008

spellbinding noir gem with Anne Baxter

If you love Anne Baxter ("All About Eve", "The Ten Commandments"), chances are you'll most certainly appreciate her bravura performance in THE BLUE GARDENIA, directed in 1953 by Fritz Lang. This spellbinding film noir gem, based on a story by Vera Caspary (best-remembered for "Laura"), takes the audience on a mysterious murder case with lots of unexpected twists and turns.

When Norah Larkin (Anne Baxter) learns that her boyfriend overseas has become engaged to another woman, she drowns her sorrows at the Blue Gardenia club with notorious playboy Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr). The following morning, Harry is discovered dead in his apartment, and Norah has no memory of what occurred in those few crucial hours. Driven to the brink of near-hysteria, Norah begins to fear the worst as scandal-hungry newspapers start to fill their columns with stories of the "Blue Gardenia" murderess. Could Norah have really killed Prebble?...

Anne Baxter leads a dream cast in THE BLUE GARDENIA which also boasts delightful Ann Sothern ("Lady in a Cage") and Jeff Donnell ("In a Lonely Place") as Norah's flatmates; Richard Conte as the newspaper reporter who just might provide the key to Norah's salvation, and the legendary Nat 'King' Cole in a cameo appearance, singing the haunting title song (composed by Bob Russell & Lester Lee).

THE BLUE GARDENIA is filled with the sickening paranoia which was so indicative of the times in which it was filmed. Director Fritz Lang was one of the unfortunate targets of McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee; an anti-Communist witchhunt which ultimately (and needlessly) destroyed the lives of many actors, screenwriters and directors in the Hollywood community. Lang used that same sense of paranoic dread in depicting the ordeal of Norah in the movie.

If you love noir, THE BLUE GARDENIA will be an essential purchase. The DVD sadly has no extra materials. (Single-sided, single-layer disc). March 20, 2008

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