Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

September 4, 2017 (Venice International Film Festival), November 10, 2017 (United States), January 12, 2018 (United Kingdom), release dates

Directed by Martin McDonagh

Screenplay by Martin McDonagh

Music by Carter Burwell

Edited by Jon Gregory

Cinematography by Ben Davis

Frances McDormand as Mildred Hayes

Woody Harrelson as William “Bill” Willoughby

Sam Rockwell as Jason Dixon

John Hawkes as Charlie Hayes

Peter Dinklage as James

Abbie Cornish as Anne Willoughby

Caleb Landry Jones as Red Welby

Kerry Condon as Pamela

Darrell Britt-Gibson as Jerome

Lucas Hedges as Robbie Hayes

Želiko Ivanek as the desk sergeant

Amanda Warren as Denise

Kathryn Newton as Angela Hayes

Samara Weaving as Penelope

Clarke Peters as Chief Abercrombie

Distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures

Produced by Blueprint Pictures, Fox Searchlight Pictures, Film4 Productions, Cutting Edge Group

Frances McDormand plays Mildred Hayes, a woman grieving the rape and murder of her daughter seven months prior to the start of the film. Mildred Hayes commissions three dilapidated billboards on a rarely traveled road outside the small town of Ebbing, Missouri, to send a message to the Ebbing Police Department and specifically to the police chief, Willoughby. The billboards, in order, read:

◊ Raped while dying

◊ And still no arrests?

◊ How come, Chief Willoughby?

The message sets off a firestorm (literally, in two separate cases) of protests and condemnation. Not from Chief Willoughby: He’s surprisingly sympathetic. Some of the police officers under his command, including Officer Jason Dixon, take exception to the billboards. Office Dixon in particular objects to the television news interview that Mildred gives after journalists take note of the new billboards. In the interview, she states that some officers are more interested in harassing African Americans instead of investigating what she calls real crimes. It’s a veiled barb at Officer Dixon, and his reaction proves Mildred’s point.

Mildred’s grief and desperation, and Frances McDormand’s performance, are all the reasons needed to call Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri a neo-noir. Mildred drives the narrative because the story is all about her. But the film is not a typical neo-noir, and Mildred is not a traditional femme fatale. She does not use her sexuality to get what she wants, but she will use violence—and that’s thoroughly noir.

“The Last Rose of Summer” is a song used throughout the film and works beautifully to emphasize the sorrowful mood and Mildred Hayes’s grief. Click here for more information about the poem that inspired the song, and click here for more information about the song itself.

Frances McDormand has the most moving scene in the film. The moment comes when Mildred’s son Robbie tries to stop her from saving one of the billboards that has been set on fire. It is already nearly destroyed, and there is little that she and Robbie can do. Robbie refuses to give Mildred a fire extinguisher that still works, and Mildred screams Robbie’s name. All her grief and rage are evident in her voice and on her face.

McDormand is also in the scene that I think is the most frightening in the film: when a customer comes into the shop where she works and threatens her with physical harm. The customer seethes with rage against women. He uses everything that is publicly known about the murder of Angela Hayes, Mildred’s daughter, and threatens the same to Mildred. If another character hadn’t entered the store at the right time, he likely would have made good on his threats. It’s a chilling scene: It contains very little physical violence compared to other violent scenes in the film, but viewers don’t know that on first viewing. The fear of what could happen and the images created by the threats in the mind’s eye are truly unsettling.

McDormand’s performance is exceptional—and not only because of the scenes I just described. Mildred Hayes is a very complicated character. She is capable of great compassion and of extreme violence. She is a victim many times over: of domestic abuse, of the murder of her daughter, of threats from both neighbors and complete strangers. It’s hard not to root for her, in spite of her own acts of violence.

The film does offer the opportunity for redemption, and it comes in surprising ways and for characters you might least expect. Violence, grief, despair seem to generate more and more violence, but then matters take a turn, and some say that enough is enough. I hesitate to say more because newcomers to the story should savor the film, the story, as I was able to do. I want to see the film again because I’m sure I missed some details, not because the plot is lacking but because it’s so easy to become absorbed the first time around by the power of it all.

I enjoyed this film more than I thought I would. The premise is all noir: a woman grieving the loss of her daughter before the film starts. She is awash in grief and despair, and she wants justice for her daughter. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri may not have other elements typical of a noir: no femme fatale, not a lot of shadowy cinematography, no off-kilter shots or extreme close-ups. But it does have a mother’s grief. And it does have a lot of violence for a small town like Ebbing, Missouri.

The Blue Gardenia (1953)

March 28, 1953, release date

Directed by Fritz Lang

Screenplay by Charles Hoffman

Based on the novella “The Gardenia” by Vera Caspary

Music by Raoul Kraushaar

Edited by Edward Mann

Cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca

Anne Baxter as Norah Larkin

Richard Conte as Casey Mayo

Ann Sothern as Crystal Carpenter

Jeff Donnell as Sally Ellis

Raymond Burr as Harry Prebble

Richard Erdman as Al

George Reeves as Police Captain Sam Haynes

Ruth Storey as Rose Miller

Ray Walker as Homer

Nat King Cole as himself

Distributed by RKO

Produced by Blue Gardenia Productions

Norah Larkin and her two roommates, Crystal Carpenter and Sally Ellis, work at the West-Coast Telephone Company. Reporter Casey Mayo of the Los Angeles Chronicle arrives one day to do a human interest story on the telephone operators who work there; artist Harry Prebble is already in the company offices sketching women at random, but on this particular day, he is sketching Crystal Carpenter.

According to Wikipedia, The Blue Gardenia (1953) was the first of director Fritz Lang’s “newspaper noir” movie trilogy. The others are While the City Sleeps (released on May 16, 1956) and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (released on September 13, 1956). Click here for more information.

The Blue Gardenia doesn’t really explain Harry’s connection to everyone else on that particular day; the only detail about Prebble’s character that is clear from the start is that he is interested in women and getting their phone numbers, and he has found the right gig for meeting as many women as he can. He even gets a phone call at West Coast from a woman, Rose, he has already met and spurned. Rose comes across as hysterical and demanding, but her role is extremely important, and she returns to the story later to fill in missing details.

The first seven to ten minutes of exposition in The Blue Gardenia lay the foundation and provide many of the details that viewers need to keep track of the plot to come. In the opening, we meet all the main characters and learn important details about them. We learn that Norah’s boyfriend is fighting in Korea and that Harry Prebble is an unsavory character whom women should avoid. Even the phone call from Rose, which seems insignificant compared to everything else discussed and shown about the main characters, turns out to be a vital clue in the mystery that unfolds.

In fact, the opening sequence to The Blue Gardenia is a perfect example of what is so great about well-done B movies (and most films noir fall into the B movie category): Viewers have to pay attention and remember details. Everything is packed into a short running time and nothing is wasted. Even the musical number sung by Nat King Cole is an important part of the story. He is a famous singer, and the film uses his popular music as a plot device. The film and the musical number go by the same name, as does the restaurant where Norah meets Harry Prebble for dinner. And Blue Gardenia is the nickname that Casey Mayo gives to Harry Prebble’s murderer in his features for the Los Angeles Chronicle.

Click here for another post about The Blue Gardenia, at the blog called The Blonde at the Film. Check out the many stills and read to the end for a link to the Lux Radio production of the story starring Dana Andrews and Ruth Roman. Thank you, Cameron!

After leaving work at the West-Coast Telephone Company in the opening sequence, Norah and her roommates return home. It’s Norah’s birthday, and she plans to celebrate alone by opening the latest letter from her boyfriend in Korea. It turns out to be a “Dear Jane” letter because her boyfriend has found someone new. When Harry Prebble calls and mistakes Norah for her roommate Crystal, Norah goes along with the error and decides to meet Harry Prebble for dinner. During dinner, Harry takes advantage of Norah’s emotional state and gets her drunk on Polynesian Pearl Divers. He lies to her about the drink’s ingredients, just as he lies to her later about the coffee he serves to her at his apartment.

Viewers have a lot of sympathy for Norah, even though she is in Harry Prebble’s apartment the night that he is murdered. And even though all the evidence points to her as the murderer when she wakes the next morning with a severe hangover and a case of amnesia about the events of the previous night.

(This blog post about The Blue Gardenia contains spoilers.)

The first time that I saw The Blue Gardenia, the ending struck me as a bit cheesy and a little too optimistic for a film noir. But the second time that I saw it, from a modern, twenty-first-century perspective, it didn’t seem quite so optimistic. According to the narrative, Norah Larkin’s future happiness hinges on Casey Mayo calling her and pursuing her. But Mayo is another man, like Harry Prebble, who lies to her.

When Norah first meets Casey Mayo, during a fabulous sequence when she goes to the Los Angeles Chronicle office, Mayo is a man with an ulterior motive. The camerawork “sets him up”: First, there is the long shot of Norah stepping out of the elevator and coming into the newspaper office. Then there is the medium shot of her walking through the desks in the dark and the camera panning to follow (stalk?) her. And why do we have the feeling that she is being stalked? And by whom? The flashing “CHRONICLE” sign alternately lights the way and leaves her in darkness. Casey Mayo calls out to her and scares her. He says that he didn’t mean to scare her, but he wants and gets the upper hand.

Another detail about Casey Mayo that bothered me occurs at the end of the film, when Mayo tosses his little black book of women’s telephone numbers to the newspaper photographer and coworker Al. The business about the phone numbers harks back to Harry Prebble and his predatory search for women’s phone numbers. Harry Prebble didn’t have a little black book; he had no plans to keep in touch with any of his conquests. But the comparison to Prebble, a predatory rapist, doesn’t make Casey Mayo look good.

The film and the short story that inspired it are loosely based on the case of the Black Dahlia, I believe. The film has Casey Mayo, the newspaper reporter, looking for a lurid story and willing to lie about his intentions to get it. He writes an open letter to the murderer, whom he nicknames Blue Gardenia, promising her legal help if she will talk to him first. He wants the scoop because, as he explains to Al, Blue Gardenia is “hot copy.” Until she calls, Mayo is willing to listen to other callers confess to a crime that they didn’t commit and don’t know anything about, which was true of the Black Dahlia’s case, too.

The film’s premise is very dark and completely noir: It is loosely based on a real-life murder mystery, and the male leads are predatory, albeit in different ways. They don’t leave much real hope for Norah Larkin, but such ambivalence is one of the factors that makes film noir so deliciously noir.