SOURCE: "The Place of Women in Fritz Lang's The Blue Gardenia," in Women in Film Noir, BFI Publishing, 1980, pp. 83-90.

In the following essay, Kaplan presents three ways in which the male discourse in Lang's The Blue Gardenia is undercut by Norah, the female protagonist, even though Lang restores the order of the film noir at the end of the film.

In the typical film noir, the world is presented from the point of view of the male investigator, who often recounts something that happened in the past. The investigator, functioning in a nightmare world where all the clues to meaning are deliberately hidden, seeks to unravel a mystery with which he has been presented. He is in general a reassuring presence in the noir world: we identify with him and rely on him to use reason and cunning, if not to outwit the criminals then at least...