This haunting, deftly handled noir from 1944 comprehensively turns on its head the premise of that genre. Noir is characterized by the femme fatale who leads men to their destruction and whose capricious and potent sexuality becomes the object of obsession from the men who circle in her orbit. In “Laura” the femme fatale is ostensibly the eponymous heroine whose portrait proudly allures with her beauity visitors to her apartment - from above the mantlepiece. As the film opens we find that Laura has been murdered and events are recounted by Lydecker (Clifton Webb) to the detective assigned to the case, Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews). The audience learns about the menage between Laura, Lydecker and Shelby (Vincent Price) through this time-honoured narrative technique. Detective McPherson is dawn to Laura from her portrait and what he learns about her in these flashbacks with Lydecker. She is the epitome of grace, poise, beauty and refinement – anything but the archetypical, street-wise noir manipulator. In fact, the two men in Laura’s life are both responsible for corrupting her – for blinding her to reality through promises and flattery.
The now-famous, lush theme from “Laura”, composed by David Raksin, swirls around the proceedings effectively obscuring the darker underbelly of the events and imbuing the film with romance when murder is actually a central element of the plot. Detective McPherson (Dana Andrews) falls in love with Laura, a woman he doesn't know, by reading her words - in her diary - and subsuming himself in her thoughts, made more real by that compelling and powerful portrait. It’s a film about obsession - of the living for the (presumed) dead. Though it has some similarities with noir in terms of feminine allure, it is also a psychological drama about love, obsession and desire. Audiences can understand that jealousy might be a motivation from the male characters. Only a director like Preminger could develop such an idea, with his ability to wring psychology and tension out of a plot. His “Anatomy of a Murder”, from the 1950s, was another such film.
When Laura unexpectedly and very-much alive arrives back in her apartment, startling the Detective who has fallen asleep by her portrait, we already know that the love story is well underway. This sleeping scene is very reminiscent of another noir, “The Woman in the Window” from the same year (Directed by Fritz Lang) about a dream which seems real when a naive Professor is lured into murder by a femme fatale, whose picture he has admired in a shop window.
Noir had its own unique tropes and techniques which would have been easily recognizable by audiences but “Laura” upends those conventions with its men manipulating events with one proving to be the real criminal. Joseph la Schell’s wonderful cinematography on a black and white canvas (typical of film noir) adds to the elegance of the film and its shadows and light render more acutely the plot excesses bathing them in a velvet hue. Gene Tierney as “Laura” is the star of this film and the eloquent and debonaire Lydecker shapes her into the alluring social creature she becomes. In that sense, the film is also a make-over which is not something we would normally associate with noir. But transformation occurs in the sceptical gum-shoe when he allows his emotions to dominate his police work to such an extent that he has to ‘arrest’ Laura and interview her at the police station in order to be free of her spell from the apartment. Audiences are treated to suspense only in the last minutes of the film when the real villain is exposed, otherwise “Laura” is almost entirely psychological.
The now-famous, lush theme from “Laura”, composed by David Raksin, swirls around the proceedings effectively obscuring the darker underbelly of the events and imbuing the film with romance when murder is actually a central element of the plot. Detective McPherson (Dana Andrews) falls in love with Laura, a woman he doesn't know, by reading her words - in her diary - and subsuming himself in her thoughts, made more real by that compelling and powerful portrait. It’s a film about obsession - of the living for the (presumed) dead. Though it has some similarities with noir in terms of feminine allure, it is also a psychological drama about love, obsession and desire. Audiences can understand that jealousy might be a motivation from the male characters. Only a director like Preminger could develop such an idea, with his ability to wring psychology and tension out of a plot. His “Anatomy of a Murder”, from the 1950s, was another such film.
When Laura unexpectedly and very-much alive arrives back in her apartment, startling the Detective who has fallen asleep by her portrait, we already know that the love story is well underway. This sleeping scene is very reminiscent of another noir, “The Woman in the Window” from the same year (Directed by Fritz Lang) about a dream which seems real when a naive Professor is lured into murder by a femme fatale, whose picture he has admired in a shop window.
Noir had its own unique tropes and techniques which would have been easily recognizable by audiences but “Laura” upends those conventions with its men manipulating events with one proving to be the real criminal. Joseph la Schell’s wonderful cinematography on a black and white canvas (typical of film noir) adds to the elegance of the film and its shadows and light render more acutely the plot excesses bathing them in a velvet hue. Gene Tierney as “Laura” is the star of this film and the eloquent and debonaire Lydecker shapes her into the alluring social creature she becomes. In that sense, the film is also a make-over which is not something we would normally associate with noir. But transformation occurs in the sceptical gum-shoe when he allows his emotions to dominate his police work to such an extent that he has to ‘arrest’ Laura and interview her at the police station in order to be free of her spell from the apartment. Audiences are treated to suspense only in the last minutes of the film when the real villain is exposed, otherwise “Laura” is almost entirely psychological.
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