At first glance, an inconspicuous opening: a man enters a building, observes the workers, banters around. Yet a strange air pervades the scene. A second glance is required, as always in Fritz Lang’s films. Suddenly, things become clearer, just as they muddy; images abound, the clash between representation and represented unavoidable in every shot for The Blue Gardenia (1953). The man is Casey Mayo, head journalist at The Chronicle, immortalized in the framed picture that towers over a stack of newspapers by the reception desk, an aggrandized face to an unremarkable body, larger than his own papers, larger than his own work.
One face dissolves to another. The workers are telephone operators, introduced first through a close-up of one of them, Crystal, who, as the camera gradually dollies out, reveals herself to be (first courted by Mayo, then) posing for a sketch, drawn by commercial calendar artist Prebble. It’s a strange shot, while also cinema’s most common one. In Hollywood, it was generally uncommon to start a shot on such a close-up. Its function is simple, to focus and concentrate attention on one thing. The consequence in this scene is the worker snatched out of her reality, the humdrum work of the operators, which is unglamorous, if decent. Prebble beautifies the worker to an idealized extent, creating an identity, a style not corresponding to her realities, yet one sold to, and then worn again by those same women. Norah, the eventual protagonist, joins the group, proclaiming: “Crystal, it looks just like you.” Hollywood realism. Image, reality and perception become one and the same.
The two are completed by Sally: three roommates living in a world of appearances. Crystal, as the opening indicates, spends her days with her physical one, giving advice on how to appear in front of men, how to sell a desirable personality. Sally’s ensconced in the world of Micky Mallott pulp novels, stories she knows by heart but buys nonetheless. Norah, believing herself to be above the two, who more or less acknowledge their implicit entrapment, is the worst victim, for she believes earnestly in the appearances presented to her. She holds onto her love for a soldier stationed in Korea, one framed picture her sole piece of comfort, until a crass letter signals the end of her hopes. At her most vulnerable, she accepts Prebble’s invitation for a date, who meant to call Crystal but takes anyone he can get. A visit at The Blue Gardenia, drinks, a struggle at Prebble’s home, hallucinations, sudden death follow, Norah presuming her guilt. Desperate to catch the killer before the police and conduct an interview, Mayo starts his own campaign, first with a sensationalized account of the crime, followed by a letter to the murderess, sketching her, imploring her to visit him first. The implication is clear. Image for attention. With Norah, other women flock to Mayo, desperate to be interrogated, to be known as The Blue Gardenia. Image comes with attention. Always.
From the sketch of Crystal to her own in the newspaper, Norah believes herself guilty, because she believes in these contrived identities, a vicious cycle emblematized in Prebble’s second sketch, a woman wearing a black dress that dissolves to the identical image of a real Norah wearing it, the same dress of the incident, the same dress everyone wears. It no longer “looks just like” her, it is her. The blind flower seller from The Blue Gardenia nightclub confirms as much, just as Mayo’s article confirms her beauty; neither need confirmation, for they’re as necessary as the plotline of the cheap Micky Mallot pulp novels Sally reads.
Prebble sketches women into idealized representations of workers, Mayo sketches women into idealized representations of criminals. The women they create have no use for individuality. Prebble calls Crystal the night of the murder, yet makes a date with Norah, not even recognizing the different voices. To him, they may just as well be the same. Mayo perfects this objectification by keeping a black book with phone numbers, exclusively referring to the woman he courts by their number. The impersonality of their work as faceless telephone operators extends over into the private. Equally, to him, the true identity of the murderess matters less than the identity he created for her. Entertainment, journalism, advertisement, like the women become sides of the same coin. The often-ascribed fatalism in Lang is a socially determined one; there’s a clear trajectory from Mabuse’s empire of evil to the pleasure-driven escapades of Chuck-a-Luck, to Norah’s dress, all products, and yet nevertheless agents of their environment, of their downfall. Norah believes in the signifiers, just like she believed the sketch of Crystal to represent her perfectly, just like she believed the picture of the soldier.
Lang suggests that images can’t be trusted and conceptualizes here the apocalyptic world that he’d complete in Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. No truth but the contesting of claims. By then, he’d been a Hollywood director for longer than a German one. His form reflected this, evolved continually and pruned, while his outlook sharpened, always remaining darkly Germanic. By The Blue Gardenia, none of the expressionism that had so marked the silent period, that had so marked American cinema, remained; equally little remained of the experimental lyricism of Liliom and You Only Live Once, which withered toward an austere sobriety, a certain perfectionism where everything’s necessity, as necessary as the beautiful blonde of the Mallot novels, as necessary as Norah’s black dress. In his fatalism he asks then, who is to say that Norah’s identifications begin and end with the dress of the first sketch, when the fundamental issue of vision is at risk. In Lang, content and form are merged anew. A second glance is required.
In The Blue Gardenia, every person acts according to an image created by someone else. Where else are to land, Lang asks, but at a point of self-implication if one trusts the sheen of the image. The film (and film in general) functions likewise. Image is gospel. We buy into the images by the genre they represent without questioning their validity. Lang plays with this and structures the mystery around it, putting little effort into the actuality of it, essentially revealing it within the first five minutes, while distracting us with Norah’s subjectivity. The protagonist, it puts her in the same position as the audience, expecting her to be involved by virtue of the structure of a Hollywood film noir. Our involvement in the story matches and mirrors her naivety. We see and expect, we don’t look. Each image is accepted as reality. The unfulfilling dénouement hands us a mirror. Whether we take the time to reflect, or deflect, is our responsibility.