The Blue Gardenia
by Fritz Lang
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ann Sothern, Anne Baxter, Jeff Donnell, Raymond Burr, Richard ConteDirector: Fritz Lang
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Nicholas Musuraca
Editor: Edward Mann
Producer: Alex Gottlieb
Writer: Charles Hoffman
Writer: Vera Caspary
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-04-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Image Entertainment
Movie Reviews of The Blue Gardenia
Movie Review: Very good Noir Murder Drama by Fritz Lang
Summary: 3 Stars
The Blue Gardenia is a really good film noir/murder drama with Norah Larkin (Anne Baxter) being unable to remember if she killed Harry Prebble(Raymond Burr). She cant recall if she did - but all the clues point to her direction as if she did.
Richard Conte is the newspaper journalist and George Reeves is a Police Captain in this and both are great in their roles as well. Directed by Fritz Lang who gave us M , Metropolis and other outstanding films.
Easily recommended to fans of Noir, Lang, Baxter, Burr,& Conte... and Nat King Cole fans as well since he appears singing the song Blue Gardenia. To me it is a solid 3.5 because there are , at least in my opinion, better movies of this sort like the Glass Key and Blue Dahlia. That being said it is a solid movie with great performances by all.
Summary of The Blue Gardenia
Fritz Lang's scathing critique of fifties America's hunger for bloodshed and scandal. Classic Hollywood film noir with a feminine twist, "The Blue Gardenia" stars Anne Baxter (All About Eve) as Norah Larkin, a working girl who wakes up a murderess after passing out in the apartment of brutish playboy Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr). Branded "The Blue Gardenia" by a sensational columnist (Richard Conte), Norah dodges dragnets, informants and the cruel hand of fate as she struggles to conceal her involvement with Prebble and to remember the details of her ill fated night. As her hopes for justice fade, she decides to gamble her future on the journalist who transformed her into such a notorious public figure. Enhancing the melancholy mood of the film is the haunting theme song arranged by Nelson Riddle and performed to perfection by Nat "King" Cole.With its title inspired by the notorious Black Dahlia murder case, The Blue Gardenia throws a twist into the story by making the mystery woman not the victim but the suspect in a lurid murder case. Anne Baxter, playing a virginal blonde with almost breathless innocence, impulsively accepts a blind date after receiving a "Dear Jane" letter from her boyfriend in Korea. Raymond Burr oozes slime as the lothario who plots his seduction with cynical calculation ("For drinks, Polynesian Pearl Divers, and don't spare the rum!") and the naive Baxter is easy prey, until she fights back against his advances with a fireplace poker and stumbles home. Waking up the next morning with the past evening a veritable blank, she discovers herself the prime suspect in a murder case trumpeted into a sensationalistic headline story by calculating columnist Richard Conte. Fritz Lang transforms the rather conventional low-budget thriller into a paranoid nightmare, his cheap sets and flat backdrops creating a tawdry world peopled by cynics and opportunists preying on the guileless, and Baxter makes every guilt-ridden moment palpable. Like in many film noir thrillers, the pat conclusion seems wholly arbitrary, the product of the Hollywood happy-ending machine. However, Lang's film isn't about the mystery, but the experience of an innocent whose single, desperate transgression turns her world upside down. --Sean Axmaker
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