BLUE GARDENIA

US, 1953, 88 minutes, Black and white.
Anne Baxter, Richard Conti, Ann Sothern, Raymond Burr, Jeff Donnell, George Reeves, Nat ‘King’ Cole.
Directed by Fritz Lang.

Blue Gardenia is a film noir from Fritz Lang, typical of some of the small thrillers of the 1950s.

It is a story of amnesia with Anne Baxter, waiting for her boyfriend to come home from the war, accepts an invitation from a playboy, drinks too much, returns home with him, resists his forcing himself on her and kills him. In the morning she cannot remember what happened. She is helped by a newspaperman in order to confront the truth and communicate it.

Anne Baxter was good at this kind of film. Raymond Burr appears, yet again, as the villain. Richard Conti is the newspaperman.

Nat ‘King’ Cole sings the title song as himself.

The film was directed by Fritz Lang who made such an impact in Germany in the 1920s, especially with Metropolis and in the 1930s with M. Claimed by Goebbels as the director for the Third Reich, he escaped from Germany and went to Hollywood where he made a number of significant films in the late 30s including You Only Live Once and Fury. During the 1940s he specialised in a number of thrillers. His range increased during the 1950s although the films were much smaller by comparison. After Blue Gardenia he was to go on to make the classics The Big Heat and Human Desire.

1. How interesting a murder mystery was this? Was it in any way clever? Was it merely routine? A Hollywood murder mystery? Why?

2. How did the screenplay compel audience interest? Identification with characters? Bright dialogue? The mystery itself? The determination of the heroine? How were all of these factors utilised in the film?

3. How interesting were the girls who shared the flat with Nora? Their bright dialogue and humour? Creating a situation for the murder mystery? How enjoyable was this? How important for the film? Their later contribution to the story?

4. How did the film establish its characters to make the murder situation credible? The background of work and the telephones? The newspaper atmosphere? The ordinariness of the situation?

5. How sympathetic a character was Nora? As a working girl? Her world? Her suffering then when she received the letter? Was her outing with Prebble credible? the way that it was filmed? the clues given? The song, the blind woman, the waiter, getting drunk etc?

6. How did the film rely on the audience’s response to Harry Prebble? The audience response to the Prebble type? the sympathy for Nora as against him? The audience’s lack of sympathy for his death? After he had molested?

7. How contrived was the sequence where we thought Nora might have killed him? How did this contrast with the real murder? Was the clue given too obviously? Why?

8. How important was Nora and her predicament for the feel of the film? was her behaviour credible? Her concealing of the truth? What would any woman have done in her situation? Why? Why not go to the police?

9. How sympathetic a character was Casey Mao? Was his character well established as a good newspaper man? Should he have had scruples in invading this privacy? Was he just a self-centred? Did he have the right to investigate the murder? How did he use Nora and her emotional fear and response?

10. How important was the theme of trust in the film? Mao’s atmosphere of trust, Nora’s confiding in him - how important and emotional were these sequences? Why?

11. How brutal was the sense of betrayal? The fact that Mao was using her, despite his change of heart? The despair for Nora when she was betrayed?

12. How ingenious was the working out of the truth did Plato redeem himself? The contribution of Crystal? Nora’s final liberation?

13. How much of this was a ‘woman's film’? Of a woman’s audience identifying with Nora and her predicament and her behaviour?