The Blue Gardenia

Blue Gardenia (1953)

The likable Richard Conte makes a great news reporter here, and Anne Baxter as the woman in trouble is pitch perfect. In fact, Baxter's two sidekicks are also right on, Jeff Donnell (a woman, really sharp) and Ann Southern. It's a good story, a little forced, but with lots of atmosphere at the right times (including a scene with the real Nat King Cole playing and singing).

What holds the movie back is a mixture of basic story line, which lacks velocity and credibility equally, and direction, which doesn't heighten what is really strong here. That is, a great cast, and some great situations (including murder). Fritz Lang, the director, is accountable, of course, for some judgements that let things loosen up too much, and for the cute but abrupt ending. There are some characters that got developed in the beginning that don't get a chance to blossom. If we just focus on the two leads (no counting Raymond Burr, who has a brief and different kind of presence), there is a chemistry not quite clicking. Nice, regular guy Conte and slightly sophisticated Baxter don't quite match up, even though both are convincing individually.

There is some talent behind the scenes here worth mention, especially cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, who has done a whole slew of great small movies with astonishing visuals. Lang uses him well, though with a studied restraint that almost implies this was a throwaway effort. It comes between two of his greatest American movies, however: Clash by Night and The Big Heat. It's worth a look, a good movie not quite a noir by usual measures, but filled with intrigue and a little touch of welcome romance.

In The Blue Gardenia, Anne Baxter's feeling low and depressed because her GI fiancé in Korea has given her the brushoff. Against her better judgment she goes out with Raymond Burr, full time artist and full time wolf. A few Polynesian Pearl Divers in the local bar which might have been spiked and Anne's not doing so good. But good enough to hit Burr with a fireplace poker and somehow make her way home like Cinderella with both shoes missing.

George Reeves taking a break from Superman plays the Los Angeles homicide detective gets a little unwanted help from Richard Conte, a Walter Winchell like newspaper columnist who's no doubt thinking of the black dahlia murders in LA a few years because a Blue Gardenia's been left at the crime scene and Nat King Cole both sang it live and on record in the film.

In the meantime Baxter's mood swings are being noticed by her roommates Ann Sothern and Jeff Donnell. And Conte's got his own investigation going into the Blue Gardenia murder. It all makes for one interesting and murky film in the tradition of Fritz Lang.

Anne in a sense does a reprise of her Oscar winning performance from The Razor's Edge as a woman being trapped in tragedy. She blamed herself for her family's death in The Razor's Edge and she may or may not have killed Burr. The only difference is that an arrest might lead to an expiation of sin of a sort.

Fritz Lang made a specialty in harassed and harried protagonists getting themselves into some real jackpots whether it was Henry Fonda in You'll Only Live Once, Edward G. Robinson in Scarlett Street and The Woman In the Window, and we can even count Peter Lorre in M. These are people who in fact were guilty. For the first time however Lang's harried protagonist is a woman and Anne gives a great performance.

One scene I really loved is one with Almira Sessions as a brain dead housekeeper who finds Burr's body and then proceeds to clean up the crime scene. After all as she explains to Reeves this is her job and what she's paid to do. The fact she's destroyed all forensic evidence doesn't seem to impress her in the slightest.

On the other hand had she done like a normal person would have and not touched anything, the forensics would have cleared the whole thing up and we wouldn't have a movie.

One of Fritz Lang's lesser efforts this film is weighed down by a flat screenplay that gives the darkly great Richard Conte and the wonderfully sassy Ann Sothern not much to work with and a way too over the top performance by Anne Baxter that sounds as if Lang told her, "Whatever you did in "Eve", do the opposite". It does, however, feature properly moody cinematography by Nicholas Musuraka and one genuinely indelible scene, the one in the Great Early 50s Tiki Lounge with Baxter and Raymond Burr getting sloshed on tropical rum concoctions while the aging, Russian cigarette gal circulates and Nat King Cole, nattily attired (as usual,) with lay around necktie, croons the title song. Now that's noir! Give it a C plus.

PS...Appropriate that I saw this date rape flic on the day Cosby got sprung on a technicality.

Norah Larkin (Anne Baxter) is a telephone operator who plans to spend her birthday evening alone with her boyfriend - or rather, with his photograph and a letter she just received from him. The real guy is 6000 miles away in Korea. While her two roommates - Crystal (Ann Sothern), a wisecracking divorcée and Sally (Jeff Donnell), a sweet girl with a taste for bloodthirsty mystery novels - are gone, Norah, wearing a black taffeta dress and sipping champagne, reads the letter and blanches. Her sweetheart has dumped her. She ends up spending the rest of her evening with Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr), a wolf who draws girls for a living and ruins them as a hobby. He takes her to the Blue Gardenia and they listen to Nat King Cole as he gets her very drunk on Polynesian pearl divers. The next morning she wakes up with a terrible hangover, but that's the best part. At work she learns of a murderess soon to be called the Blue Gardenia Girl. The label is invented by a newspaper columnist named Casey Mayo (Richard Conte), who hopes to find the femme fatale before the police. What worries Norah is that he and the police may both be looking for her.

Fritz Lang directed this solid mystery thriller that has our complete attention from beginning to end. A good script and good performances are accentuated by Fritz Lang's camera and his usual sharp eye for detail and way of creating mounting dread.

The Blue Gardenia is the first of Fritz Lang's so-called "newspaper trilogy" (While The City Sleeps, and Beyond A Reasonable Doubt are the other two).

This one is my favorite of the three. It's ironic because Lang himself didn't care for the picture saying, "The story itself wasn't original and the acting wasn't engaging enough to elevate it past being a mild thriller."

I disagree with the master. Lang was coming off some personally turbulent years and was fed up with Hollywood. Perhaps he was not happy with the performance of Richard Conti, the newspaper reporter. Lang wanted Dana Andrews, who would go on to work on the next two pictures of the newspaper trilogy.

But, I think Anne Baxter is great as a jilted woman who impetuously goes out on a date with a wolf, played to perfection by Raymond Burr, and finds herself literally fighting off his sexual attack while in an inebriated state. She blacks out, awakens in her bed unaware of how she got there. Later, she learns Burr's character has been murdered and now finds herself on a journey to discover if she's a killer or not.

Lang's frustration with Hollywood's limitations were starting to show up with his lackluster camera movement (as compared to previous pictures). But, a movie made by a disillusioned Fritz Lang is still a must-watch.