The Blue Gardenia
(1953)
★ 6.5 IMDb · 104 votes
Year: 1953
Runtime: 89 мин
Country: United States of America
Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: Энн Бакстер, Richard Conte, Ann Sothern, Рэймонд Бёрр, Jeff Donnell, Richard Erdman, Джордж Ривз, Ruth Storey, Ray Walker, Nat King Cole
Plot
Upon waking up to the news that the man she’d gone on a date with the previous night has been murdered, a young woman with only a faint memory of the night’s events begins to suspect that she murdered him while attempting to resist his advances.
In Los Angeles, on the day of her birthday, the telephone operator Norah Larkin decides to celebrate dining alone at home, with the picture of her beloved fiancé, a soldier overseas, and reading his last letter to her. In the letter, he tells her that he met an Army nurse stationed in Japan and plans to marry her. Norah, completely upset, accepts a blind date with the Don Juan and photographer of calendar girls, Harry Prebble. They go to the Blue Gardenia Club, and Norah drinks six strong cocktails, Polynesian Pearl Divers, and gets very, very drunk. Harry takes her to his apartment and tries to force Norah to have sex, and she grabs a fireplace poker to fend off Harry. On the next morning, she wakes up in her apartment with her two roommates, but she cannot remember what happened. When she reads the newspaper, she finds that Harry is dead and the police have her handkerchief, her high heels, and her blue gardenia, and they are trying to locate the woman who killed the famous wolf Harry. When she reads in the newspaper that the journalist Casey Mayo is offering his support, as well as his newspaper's, in exchange for an exclusive interview, Norah decides to call him.