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> The Blue Gardenia |
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Staring:
Anne Baxter,
Richard Conte,
Ann Sothern,
Raymond Burr,
Jeff Donnell
Director:
Fritz Lang
Average Customer Rating:   
List Price: $14.99
Our Price: $8.49
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Image Entertainment
EAN: 0014381904222
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
Label: Image Entertainment
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
Number Of Discs: 1
Publisher: Image Entertainment
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2000-04-11
Running Time: 90
Studio: Image Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: 1953-03-23 |
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Description
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.
Amazon.com essential video
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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Falls short of classic film noir, 2009-06-15
The DVD transfer is second rate. Some of the scenes appear washed out and much of the grey detail has been muddled over. This film would rate higher if someone had worked to restore the picture before putting it on DVD.
This movie, marketed as film noir, falls far short of the mark. Yes, there is a murder and there is a mystery but the plot and screenplay keep the veiwer rather bored. The best view of "The Blue Gardenia" is that it is also a woman's picture with Anne Baxter as the disillusioned heroine and murder suspect. Anne does a nice job here but it is the overall production that keeps the film from being rated higher.
Recommended to: Hard-core noir fans who want to see all films in that genre, fans of Anne Baxter or those looking for films about women.
Fritz Lang, Anne Baxter, a fireplace poker and a blue gardenia...plus a cost-of-living lesson, 2008-07-13
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.
Blue Gardenia is a hit, 2008-08-14
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.
Very good Noir Murder Drama by Fritz Lang, 2009-04-03
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.
Solid but unspectacular and fairly predictable noir is one of Lang's weaker efforts, 2009-10-02
Raymond Burr's Harry Prebble is an artist with an eye for the ladies. He calls up sarcastic Crystal (Ann Sothern), a switchboard operator that he's just met, but her friend and roommate Norah (Anne Baxter), depressed and lonely after receiving a "dear Jane" letter from her boyfriend in Korea, accepts his invitation. After a woozy, drunken evening she somehow makes it home, waking up the next morning to find Prebble has been killed. Did she do it? Will she turn herself in? Will ace newspaper columnist Casey Mayo (Richard Conte) track her down before the police do?
This is hardly top-drawer Lang, and also hardly deserves to be called "noir." Little in the way of the look or feel of that genre inhabit this, one of the director's sunnier, more optimistic films; it's hard to imagine anyone thinking that the end here will be as tragic as that in some of his harder-bitten films. It might in fact call to mind one of his earlier American efforts, 1938's YOU AND ME - also a film with a serious subject presented in a somewhat "light" manner - with general success. Lang's attempts at humor and lightness here though often fall flat or don't go anywhere: at first I thought that Norah's other roommate, Rose (Ruth Storey) would play some real part in the proceedings, murder-mystery addict that she is (rather like Pat Hitchcock in her father's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN) but that goes nowhere.
Still, after a halting first third, the story proceeds at a nice pace, and I can't find major fault with the actors, although Sothern needed more to do. It's an alright diversion. Nat King Cole plays the title tune in the too-long restaurant scene near the beginning, and the LA feel of this mostly shot-on-sets piece is decent. Worth seeing for the serious Lang-o-phile or noir addict, certainly - others might take a pass.
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