Editor Reviews:

Product Description:
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. Enhancing the melancholy mood of the film is the haunting theme song arranged by Nelson Riddle and performed to perfection by Nat "King" Cole.System Requirements:Running Time 88 MinFormat: DVD VIDEO Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 014381904222 Manufacturer No: ID9042AQDVD

Amazon.com essential video:
With its title inspired by the notorious Black Dahlia murder case, The Blue Gardenia throws a twist into the story by making the mystery woman not the victim but the suspect in a lurid murder case. Anne Baxter, playing a virginal blonde with almost breathless innocence, impulsively accepts a blind date after receiving a "Dear Jane" letter from her boyfriend in Korea. Raymond Burr oozes slime as the lothario who plots his seduction with cynical calculation ("For drinks, Polynesian Pearl Divers, and don't spare the rum!") and the naive Baxter is easy prey, until she fights back against his advances with a fireplace poker and stumbles home. Waking up the next morning with the past evening a veritable blank, she discovers herself the prime suspect in a murder case trumpeted into a sensationalistic headline story by calculating columnist Richard Conte. Fritz Lang transforms the rather conventional low-budget thriller into a paranoid nightmare, his cheap sets and flat backdrops creating a tawdry world peopled by cynics and opportunists preying on the guileless, and Baxter makes every guilt-ridden moment palpable. Like in many film noir thrillers, the pat conclusion seems wholly arbitrary, the product of the Hollywood happy-ending machine. However, Lang's film isn't about the mystery, but the experience of an innocent whose single, desperate transgression turns her world upside down. --Sean Axmaker

Rating : - Good film, Bad transfer.
Performances by Anne Baxter and Raymond Burr and Fritz Lang's direction make this a top drawer noir. Unfortunately the transfer leaves an awful lot to be desired, especially when compared to recent releases of Fox and Warner noirs. While the source print is contrasty but clean, this transfer appears to have been made from an early D1 or D2 digital video master, early digital formats that predate current DVD mastering processes, resulting in a blocky, pixilated image much like watching the film through through a window screen. By putting an already compressed image (D1 master) through another round of compression (MPEG-2 for DVD), you get an image that's perpetually distracting, and un-film-like. This is not uncommon with many low-budget DVD releases, especially from the wild-frontier days of the shift from VHS to DVD. Thanks to TCM and The Critereon Collection, our expectations are much higher now, and this is a film that deserves better.