The Blue Gardenia
Director Fritz Lang and cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca developed a revolutionary dolly for the camera that allowed for sustained tracking shots and intimate close-ups while shooting this film. Lang preferred the practice of tracking into a close-up shot of an actor as opposed to cutting to a close-up in editing. He believed the tracking close-up captured more of the actors' intimacy and emotions.,Perhaps unaware that his hands on the keyboard are visible in the mirror behind him, Nat 'King' Cole plays a strikingly different piano arrangement of "Blue Gardenia" than the one heard.,Sally Ellis: I didn't like Prebble when he was alive. But now that he's been murdered, that always makes a man so romantic.,Referenced in Viens chez moi, j'habite chez une copine (1981),Blue Gardenia
Written by Bob Russell and Lester Lee
Performed by Nat 'King' Cole
Arranged by Nelson Riddle,Norah Larkin (Anne Baxter) is a telephone operator who plans to spend her birthday evening alone with her boyfriend - or rather, with his photograph and a letter she just received from him. The real guy is 6000 miles away in Korea. While her two roommates - Crystal (Ann Sothern), a wisecracking divorcée and Sally (Jeff Donnell), a sweet girl with a taste for bloodthirsty mystery novels - are gone, Norah, wearing a black taffeta dress and sipping champagne, reads the letter and blanches. Her sweetheart has dumped her. She ends up spending the rest of her evening with Harry Prebble (Raymond Burr), a wolf who draws girls for a living and ruins them as a hobby. He takes her to the Blue Gardenia and they listen to Nat King Cole as he gets her very drunk on Polynesian pearl divers. The next morning she wakes up with a terrible hangover, but that's the best part. At work she learns of a murderess soon to be called the Blue Gardenia Girl. The label is invented by a newspaper columnist named Casey Mayo (Richard Conte), who hopes to find the femme fatale before the police. What worries Norah is that he and the police may both be looking for her.

Fritz Lang directed this solid mystery thriller that has our complete attention from beginning to end. A good script and good performances are accentuated by Fritz Lang's camera and his usual sharp eye for detail and way of creating mounting dread.,