Customer Reviews

The Blue Gardenia [VHS]

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The acting by both Anne Baxter and Raymond Burr is exceptional and elevates this to one of my favorite film noirs. Baxter is the young innocent Norah Larkin who is crushed when she receives a 'Dear Jane' letter from her boyfriend in Korea. Devastated and alone, she is easy prey for the slimey Harry Prebble portrayed by Raymond Burr in his pre-Perry Mason period. After a drunken night, Norah can't remember anything except that she was fighting off advances from Prebble. The newspapers are filled with the story of his murder and the mysterious blonde who left a blue gardenia behind. Viewers watch Norah slip deeper and deeper into paraonia as she frantically tries to conceal her involvement yet remember the details of her ill-fated night. Adding to the outstanding cast are Ann Sothern and Jeff Donnell as her roommates and Richard Conte as the newspaper reporter who makes an open appeal for the Blue Gardenia killer to come forward and trust him. As the police web (led by TV's Superman George Reeves) tightens around her, Norah turns to the reporter to help her, but....suffice it to say the happy-ever-after ending is a little too quick and easy. However, this is definitely worth watching and as an added plus you will be treated to the melodic voice of Nat "King" Cole singing the title song throughout the movie.

"The Blue Gardenia" is among director Fritz Lang's lesser films. It is often categorized as noir, but is only vaguely so. Adapted from the short story "Gardenia" by Very Caspary, it's more mystery/romance, like Caspary's "Laura", which made a far superior film. The cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca is in high-key style that was coming back into fashion in the 1950s, a major departure from the low-key lighting of the 1940s that became iconic of film noir. "The Blue Gardenia" looks an awful lot like 1950s television, which is alluded to in one bit of dialogue. It's placement during the Korean War and the plethora of post-war gender stereotypes also place this film firmly in the 1950s thematically. Ironically, Fritz Lang made "The Big Heat" the same year, which is solid film noir and perhaps his only truly great American film.

Norah Larkin (Anne Baxter) is a pretty, young switchboard operator with a boyfriend to whom she is devoted stationed in Korea. She cheerfully spends her evenings at home and never dates other men, wishing to remain faithful to her man overseas. But on her birthday, she learns that her boyfriend has fallen in love with another woman. Distraught, Norah impulsively accepts a dinner invitation from artist and infamous lothario Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr). She drinks too much and gets herself right snookered, a situation which Harry tries to take advantage of. Prebble is found dead in his apartment the next day, and Norah can't remember what happened. Confused and afraid, she responds to newspaperman Casey Mayo (Richard Conte) who, looking for an angle, promised his newspaper would provide the murderer with legal assistance in exchange for an exclusive story.

I found the most striking aspect "The Blue Gardenia" to be how much it looks and feels like 1950s television. The concept of characters and gender relations had changed radically from the 1940s by the time this film was released in 1953. The men, exemplified in Harry Prebble and Casey Mayo, are conspicuously charming, egotistical, chauvinistic, predatory, and inexplicably irresistible to the ladies. The women are silly, chatty, and in need of rescuing. No one is interesting, and everyone is shallow. Add to that the cheesy "Blue Gardenia" restaurant , and the film is a little ridiculous. Nat King Cole performs "The Blue Gardenia"'s thoroughly mediocre theme song in the restaurant scene.

The DVD (Image Entertainment 2005): This print has occasional specks and spots, but most of it is clean. There are no bonus features or subtitles.

My mother and I ordered this video to see if it beared any resemblance to "The Blue Dahlia" with Alan Ladd. It turned out to be nothing like it, but we love it just tje same. I highly reccomend it to anyone who enjoys classic film noir.

BLUE GARDENIA (1953) is Fritz Lang's first film after appearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee after somebody, somehow convinced someone that he was not now and never had been a communist. BLUE GARDENIA is a particularly venomous indictment of mid-20th century America.
Or something like that. Peter Bogdanovich, director, says so on the dvd jacket back cover. I suppose if you're studying up for the essay question the phrase `scathing attack' is another one to keep in mind. Lang, if biographers can be trusted, held no great affection for a movie he had little hand in creating and one he shot in about three weeks time. Even the title indicates more commercial exploitation than artistic inspiration was at work here. The film's producer wanted to capitalize on the notorious murder in 1947of a prostitute who the press referred to as the `Black Dahlia' and built a story around a name. Heck, I thought it was an interesting, well-lit story of crime and punishment, better than most but not one that took ones breath away or left a lot of blood on the floor. Sometimes, even when made by the best of directors, films are just movies.
In any event, BLUE GARDENIA is about a good girl Norah Larkin (Ann Baxter) who gets a little too drunk one broken-hearted evening, accepts an invite from brutish playboy Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr.) They go to the Blue Gardenia nightclub where Nat King Cole sings the show (and momentum) stopping title song. Prebble plies pretty Norah with a few dozen Polynesian Pearl Divers and soon has her checking out his sketches at his apartment. By now Norah is deep in her cups and Burr makes his move. The movies leaves it a little unclear at this point but Norah soon flees the apartment, leaving her shoes, a lace handkerchief and an inanimate rogue in the strange apartment.
Norah takes it on the lam and cynical columnist Casey "Sudden death sells papers, son" Mayo (Richard Conte) writes an open letter to the Blue Gardenia, his attention-getting name for the hiding murderess. I think it's the Casey Mayo character who inspired the `scathing venom' comments. Norah can't, won't, go to the police and Mayo plays sympathetic solely to get an exclusive interview with the suspect.
Although I believe Lang didn't have as much involvement with this movie as he did with most of his masterpieces, there are enjoyable Langian touches sprinkled throughout. Norah is one of his ambiguously evil characters. The movie leads us to believe she's committed a deed most foul, but it frames it as an act of self-defense rather that violence. In fact, Norah is one of the most innocent of characters you can imagine in a crime thriller. Unfortunately for the movie a new character is preposterously introduced in the last ten minutes or so that quiets whatever questions we had about Norah's fawn-like innocence. It's a cop-out that undermines the whole movie.
BLUE GARDENIA may not be a classic crime thriller, but I liked it quite a bit. If you're a film noir fan and come in with high expectations you might be disappointed.

This film stands by itself as a bonified flim noir classic. Contrary to some opinions that it was made to capitalize on the notorious Black Dahlia murder case, which had just occurred, it is quite the opposite. The Blue Dahlia had already been in release when the murder of Elizabeth Short occurred, and when it was discovered she had a tattoo of a black dahlia on her body, an enterprising L.A. newspaper reporter nicknamed her the Black Dahlia to spice up the interest in the case to sell newspapers. Strangely, after all these years, the murder of Elizabeth Short has still not been solved and the film will always be an eerie reminder of that tragic fact. A pretty good television film titled, Who Killed The Black Dahlia, starring Lucie Arnaz was made around 1974 but I have never seen it on television, video or DVD since.

"The Blue Gardenia" opens with a plausible plotline: A nice, slightly naïve, working girl (Ann Baxter) goes on a date with a sleazebag (Raymond Burr). In early 50s Hollywood, that's how Burr was cast. This was before the "Perry Mason" series made him so respectable. The jerk gets Baxter drunk on exotic drinks and tries to put the moves on her. To ward him off, she hits RB on the head with a poker-and passes out. The next day, Burr is dead and guess who the main suspect is? Director Fritz Lang uses an old ploy: The audience suspects Baxter is innocent but Anne blacked out and doesn't know what she did! The L.A. cops are looking only for a female murderess known as "The Blue Gardenia", named for the night club Burr took her. An enterprising, oily reporter (Richard Conte) gets involved, looking only for a good headline and to sell papers. He claims to be helping Baxter/the Gardenia but winds up getting her arrested! And then? And then Conte discovers a "certain clue", proving the good girl cannot be the Gardenia! BG winds down to an inevitable 1950s "happy ending". That is the film's major weak point. A second is the rushed resolution. It appears that Warner Brothers was determined to achieve a strict 90 minute run time. Yet a few more minutes at the end might have added some needed spice and tension. Silver and Ward's "Film Noir" opined that BG was shot in 50s b& w Television style, not the standard "noir" format. Other amazon reviewers made the same observation, but this aspect is not fatal. Though it is not truly a noir release, BG is a perfectly decent murder mystery. It has an engaging and offbeat cast! Those who can live with the small amount of aforementioned baggage should still enjoy watching BG.

"I was really mad," director Fritz Lang conceded relative to his work on "The Blue Gardenia." Lang, one of the numerous talented German emigrees escaping Hitler's Germany, a group also consisting of Billy Wilder, Robert Siodmak and Max Reinhardt, had been offered the position of the head of filmmaking for the Third Reich's Propaganda Ministry by none other than Joseph Goebbels. Lang, who loathed what the Third Reich stood for, believed the offer was no more than a trap and his days were numbered if he stayed in Berlin. That same night he made his escape to Paris, after which he came to America and found a position in Hollywood making films.

Thoroughly fed up with thought control and the imprisonment of ideas, and all too subsequently people as well, Lang was furious over the Cold War response to the new challenge of the Soviet Union, that of McCarthyism and its sorry influence over the film industry with the blacklist period highlighted by the imprisonment of the Hollywood Ten for refusing to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

The term that civil libertarians of the period used was "guilt by association" and, in his creative anger, this was the story thrust of "The Blue Gardenia." Charles Hoffman's screenplay focused tightly on the tragic experience of one lovely and vulnerable young woman, Anne Baxter, who, as a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, becomes the subject of a city wide media blitz and corresponding woman hunt which blankets Los Angeles and leaves her terrified and appropriately paranoiac.

Baxter's journey into hell begins one evening after opening a letter from the man she loves in her apartment on her birthday. Her roommates Ann Sothern and Jeff Donnell are both gone and Baxter milks the occasion for romance, pouring herself a champagne toast and playing soft music as she reads what she believes will be a romantic letter from the man she hopes to marry, who is serving in the military in Korea during that conflict. They have been sweethearts since high school in Bakersfield, where they grew up some 100 miles from L.A. Instead of receiving a romantic letter she tearfully reads about him finding love with the nurse he met when he was hospitalized from a war injury, the woman he now intends to marry.

Caught in a vulnerable state, Baxter then receives a call from wolfish artist Raymond Burr, who was attempting to reach her roommate Sothern. Burr has an office near the main switchboard room of the telephone company, where Baxter and her roommates work as operators. Feeling crushed, she agrees to meet Burr and have dinner with him at The Blue Gardenia, a Hollywood restaurant-nightclub, where she listens to Nat "King" Cole's romantic rendering of the film's title song. Burr gets her drunk on exotic Polynesian drinks, then drives her to his apartment.

When Burr lives up to his reputation by coming on fast, Baxter resists. She then passes out, waking up and finding her highly romantic host lying on the rug. She quickly exits, walking home barefoot in the rain.

Richard Conte, a shrewd, ambitious newspaper columnist, surfaces on the scene next. When Burr, whose reputation definitely preceded him, is found dead in his apartment, the opportunity surfaces for regular headlines and the sale of an endless stream of newspapers. Since Baxter had been seen with Burr at nightclub, where she was provided with a free blue gardenia as befitting the establishment's custom, Conte uses the catchy name in his stories as the woman hunt heats up.

Unable to remember what happened in her conflict with Burr, a frightened Baxter burns her potentially incriminating dress which she wore that night in the trash. A police officer happens by but she barely gets away with her deed. Another time the former husband of Ann Sothern, a practical joker, causes her to hang up the telephone in fright when he calls and asks, "Is this the Blue Gardenia?"

Eventually Baxter, who is presumed guilty in the rush to judgment media style, reminiscent of McCarthy Era guilt by association, takes advantage of an offer by Conte sent via his column to meet him in private. He offers to be helpful and see that she receives fair treatment by the police. Instead the wily lieutenant heading the case's task force, played by George Reeves of the "Superman" television series, apprehends Baxter at the fast food restaurant near the newspaper where she has gone to meet Conte. Baxter believes she has been deceived by a reporter for whom she was developing a rapid romantic crush. Conte insists that Reeves is the culprit and he never deceived her.

Eventually the wily Conte cracks the case, feeling guilty over launching the Blue Gardenia frenzy. A nifty twist at film's end reveals the identity of the actual killer after bulldog reporter Conte follows up successfully on a clue.

Fritz Lang proved once more in "The Blue Gardenia" how skilled he was at putting over a film on a small budget. The action is maintained while the major point he was seeking to make was put across to the audience without reducing the film to preachiness.

I just wanted to clarify some inaccuracies put forth in a couple previous reviews:

1) "The Blue Dahlia" was released on April 19, 1946.

2) Elizabeth Short's body was found nine months later, on January 15, 1947. It is most commonly believed that she was nicknamed the "Black Dahlia" by a sensationalistic press looking for a catchy nickname. It is probably a reference to both the Veronica Lake film, and the fact that Beth had a fondness for black clothing.

3) This film, "The Blue Gardenia" was not released until 1953, and really has nothing overtly to do with the notorious unsolved murder of Beth Short. However, I CAN see where the filmmakers may have slightly exploited the fact that the Black Dahlia had seeped well into America's collective unconscious by then.

Anyone interested in the facts and theories surrounding the Black Dahlia case would do better to consult www.bethshort.com or to read John Gilmore's book "Severed", available right here at Amazon!

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.

Fritz lang's The Blue Gardenia has to be one of the most loathing and emotionally violent takes on human kind that you have to not only love it but look at yourself differently when its over! Baxter has one hell of a night after being taken advantage of by a imposing and mountain-esque Raymond Burr she fids her self not only accused of murder but accused of being a threat to society as a whole! Lang paints a gritty tale never does the film seem bright or on the point of letting Baxter see the light - even her catty roomates are vile in their delivery of compassion for her distressed life. But for as the film as a whole the movie is built on Raymond Burr. His performance is genius and so is Baxter but Burr an dhis husky voice and shadowing figure seems to roll over Baxter and the women he seduces like a bug under a tank! So to the viewer her intetions are justifed and we never forget why she has to push so hard to define her self but for all teh respect Richard Conte's do good reporter offers Baxter in her quest for redemption the scene of Burr and Conte discussing women as conquests still leaves a shudder down my back!