Movie Review: The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Synopsis: After she receives a breakup letter from her GI boyfriend on her birthday, a distraught Norah Larkin has a drunken night out on the town with womanizing artist Harry Prebble at the Blue Gardenia restaurant only to have Prebble attempt to rape her. Norah wakes up the next morning hungover and with very little memory of the previous night but learns Prebble has been murdered with evidence pointing to her as his killer.

Who's in it? The movie stars Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, Ann Sothern, Raymond Burr and Jeff Donnell.

Review: We're reaching the time of year when my arthritic knees act up a bit and the only way I can sleep is by putting some heat on them before bed. Since this resulted in my wife going to bed before me tonight, I ended up finally watching The Blue Gardenia on Amazon Prime. Overall, I have to say it was a good choice.

The mystery is a decent one, with Norah (Baxter) seemingly being the last person with Harry Prebble (Burr) before his death and witnesses putting her at the scene. This in turn put her in a state of panic that, even if she wasn't guilty, certainly made her look like it, especially when she starts to destroy evidence, such as the dress she was wearing.

At the same time, Harry was clearly a cad, with plenty of other women who had been hurt by him. This left open a list of other potential suspects with motive, though none, at least at first glance, seemed to have the same opportunity Norah did. And to be fair, if she did kill him, she did have an argument for self-defense considering he did attempt to rape her.

Adding complication to the case was the newspaper columnist, Casey Mayo (Conte), who seemed to be doing a better investigative job than the police and either believed Norah was guilty or wanted his readers to think she was, even going out of his way to get her to confess to the crime. He proved to be a bit of a wildcard because it was unclear just how far he'd go to get his story, even with the potential of framing Norah. Plus, any evidence that might have exonerated her was destroyed by Prebble's maid.

The ending to the movie was unfortunately a bit predictable. I was able to both correctly guess who the killer was and the reason for the murder. I'm not completely sure if this wasn't supposed to be intentional since the movie practically gives this away in the beginning, and it was meant to be more of a film noir than an actual mystery. However, while the movie was enjoyable regardless, I do think it might have been a bit better had there been more of a surprise at the end.

Final Opinion: This movie has been on my list for some time and it more than lived up to my expectations when I finally watched it. I'd recommend taking the time to watch it if you get a chance.

My Grade: A