Blue Gardenia, The (Full Frame)

Last Minute Sales & Specials

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. The first of Lang's "newspaper noir" trio (with "While The City Sleeps" and "Beyond A Reasonable Doubt"), "The Blue Gardenia" is a scalding critique of the public's hunger for bloodshed and scandal. At the same time, it captures the panic of a nation sliding into cold war paranoia. "It was the first picture after the McCarthy business," Lang later said. "Maybe that's what made me so venomous." Enhancing the melancholy mood of the film is the haunting theme song arranged by Nelson Riddle and performed to perfection by Nat "King" Cole.