(Spoiler warning at suitable point below) Ah, love and death
I've found myself referencing "Laura" while thinking about so many other films lately (most particularly the excellent Korean thriller "Tell Me Something") that I just have to add my pennyworth, despite being the millionth person to contribute.
The premise: 1940s New York: tough detective called in to investigate a nasty Park Avenue society murder finds himself falling for the victim through her portrait, her things, his contact with those that knew her. One night a startling twist sends him and the film in a completely unexpected direction. Don't mistake the brusqueness of style, the punchy delivery and starkness of this film for one-dimensionality. Just as the work of Preminger is greater than the sum of its parts, so "Laura" is more than meets the eye. It owes a lot to the excellent and subversive book by Vera Caspary from which it is taken. (Am I the only one who had no idea women were instrumental in every sub-genre of pulp magazine writing from the 20s to the 50s?) Much of the psychodrama came from the book but the visual and stylistic tone is pure filmic noir. However, in classic film noir the femme fatale is always the powder keg for everyone around her, and she usually pays for her sin with death. In "Laura" the central death is only the start of the story, not its retributive finale; the 'femme fatale' anti-heroine is really no such thing; and its hero, a portrait of curt masculinity, falls most unusually for an image, an idea.
* * * spoilers from here on * * * This isn't so much a study in police procedure as a study of a man in love. The underrated Dana Andrews' Detective Lieutenant Mark McPherson may seem like a cartoon hard-boiled copper, but look a little harder: his terse, tense, scrutinising detective is a study in the transformative power of love on such a man. From Waldo Lydecker, Laura's friend, we learn that McPherson is damaged a silver shinbone in his leg as a result of a gun battle with a gangster. He reveals very little of himself we know him rather from what others say, or by his actions. But his tension, control and intelligence lends an edge to his masculinity. He has ways of looking which speak volumes. His big, sad eyes reflect the bafflement of a man lifted by the love he finds himself experiencing. He plays continually with a baseball toy, to rein himself in. The point reinforced by a great punch late in the film is that he has reason to.
The sensual, swooning quality of the theme music is made flesh by the magnetic Laura herself (Gene Tierney). She's not just beautiful she's like something people dream of. Mark thinks he's dreaming when he wakes to find her standing before him: she's the woman who could make him feel whole. Laura whom he gets to know, uniquely, from the inside out is neither a 'doll' nor a 'dame' (his enraging, early words); and in reaching for her he becomes a gentleman, against his own character or background. His 'real' gentleman is in marked contrast to the apparent gentlemen (and Laura's admirers) that we first meet the acerbic, snippy Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb on great Wildean form), who narrates the first half of the film, and the Southern playboy Shelby Carpenter (an oddly cast Vincent Price). They both turn out to be fakes in a way.
So Laura emerges from her portrait, from her elegant apartment, and from Waldo's museum his clock, his story, his possession to become real for Mark. From here on in, it isn't Waldo's world any more, it's hers, and his. I think Tierney takes great credit for "Laura" not merely being the story of a tussle between three men for something they want: she shows you that there's something she wants, too, and that she has the spark and independence to get it.
The extraordinary circumstances of McPherson's contact with Laura lends their connection an intimacy which isn't lessened by the suspicion under which she labours. When Mark makes a move to arrest her at one point, it's almost as if she wants to go; she'd rather be with him under arrest, than listen to Waldo's sniping, or put up with Shelby's lies and lack of faith in her. The moral ambiguity created by these circumstances sets the tone of the piece, creating a sort of swirling, swoony romance with a very dark heart.
"Laura" stands watching and re-watching. For an interesting companion piece, check out Tierney and Andrews a few years down the line (and both incidentally somewhat battered about by life), in another great noir, "Where the Sidewalk Ends". I'd also strongly recommend reading Caspary's original pulp novel of the same name.
The premise: 1940s New York: tough detective called in to investigate a nasty Park Avenue society murder finds himself falling for the victim through her portrait, her things, his contact with those that knew her. One night a startling twist sends him and the film in a completely unexpected direction. Don't mistake the brusqueness of style, the punchy delivery and starkness of this film for one-dimensionality. Just as the work of Preminger is greater than the sum of its parts, so "Laura" is more than meets the eye. It owes a lot to the excellent and subversive book by Vera Caspary from which it is taken. (Am I the only one who had no idea women were instrumental in every sub-genre of pulp magazine writing from the 20s to the 50s?) Much of the psychodrama came from the book but the visual and stylistic tone is pure filmic noir. However, in classic film noir the femme fatale is always the powder keg for everyone around her, and she usually pays for her sin with death. In "Laura" the central death is only the start of the story, not its retributive finale; the 'femme fatale' anti-heroine is really no such thing; and its hero, a portrait of curt masculinity, falls most unusually for an image, an idea.
* * * spoilers from here on * * * This isn't so much a study in police procedure as a study of a man in love. The underrated Dana Andrews' Detective Lieutenant Mark McPherson may seem like a cartoon hard-boiled copper, but look a little harder: his terse, tense, scrutinising detective is a study in the transformative power of love on such a man. From Waldo Lydecker, Laura's friend, we learn that McPherson is damaged a silver shinbone in his leg as a result of a gun battle with a gangster. He reveals very little of himself we know him rather from what others say, or by his actions. But his tension, control and intelligence lends an edge to his masculinity. He has ways of looking which speak volumes. His big, sad eyes reflect the bafflement of a man lifted by the love he finds himself experiencing. He plays continually with a baseball toy, to rein himself in. The point reinforced by a great punch late in the film is that he has reason to.
The sensual, swooning quality of the theme music is made flesh by the magnetic Laura herself (Gene Tierney). She's not just beautiful she's like something people dream of. Mark thinks he's dreaming when he wakes to find her standing before him: she's the woman who could make him feel whole. Laura whom he gets to know, uniquely, from the inside out is neither a 'doll' nor a 'dame' (his enraging, early words); and in reaching for her he becomes a gentleman, against his own character or background. His 'real' gentleman is in marked contrast to the apparent gentlemen (and Laura's admirers) that we first meet the acerbic, snippy Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb on great Wildean form), who narrates the first half of the film, and the Southern playboy Shelby Carpenter (an oddly cast Vincent Price). They both turn out to be fakes in a way.
So Laura emerges from her portrait, from her elegant apartment, and from Waldo's museum his clock, his story, his possession to become real for Mark. From here on in, it isn't Waldo's world any more, it's hers, and his. I think Tierney takes great credit for "Laura" not merely being the story of a tussle between three men for something they want: she shows you that there's something she wants, too, and that she has the spark and independence to get it.
The extraordinary circumstances of McPherson's contact with Laura lends their connection an intimacy which isn't lessened by the suspicion under which she labours. When Mark makes a move to arrest her at one point, it's almost as if she wants to go; she'd rather be with him under arrest, than listen to Waldo's sniping, or put up with Shelby's lies and lack of faith in her. The moral ambiguity created by these circumstances sets the tone of the piece, creating a sort of swirling, swoony romance with a very dark heart.
"Laura" stands watching and re-watching. For an interesting companion piece, check out Tierney and Andrews a few years down the line (and both incidentally somewhat battered about by life), in another great noir, "Where the Sidewalk Ends". I'd also strongly recommend reading Caspary's original pulp novel of the same name.