The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Directed by

Fritz Lang

Genre

drama film, film noir, crime film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 28m

Rated

NR

Rating

6.5 of 10 from 101 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A telephone operator goes on a date with a charming man and wakes up the next morning with a hangover and no memory of the night before. After a brutal murder is reported, she begins to fear that she was the killer.

noirtensesombersuspensefulcynicalbroodingmelancholicatmospheric

What happens

The Blue Gardenia is a 1953 American film noir starring Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, and Ann Sothern. Directed by Fritz Lang from a screenplay by Charles Hoffman, it is based on the novella The Gardenia by Vera Caspary. An independent production distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, The Blue Gardenia – a cynical take on press coverage of a sensational murder case similar to the real-life Black Dahlia killing – was the first installment of Lang's "newspaper noir" film trio, being followed in 1956 by While the City Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. The song "Blue Gardenia", performed in the film by Nat King Cole, was written by Bob Russell and Lester Lee and arranged by Nelson Riddle. The director of cinematography for The Blue Gardenia was RKO regular Nicholas Musuraca, then working at Warner. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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• Jennifer (1953)