Review #585: 'Laura' (1944)

Laura was a project, based on a pulpy novel by Vera Caspery, that director Otto Preminger had to fight 20th Century Fox Mogul, Daryl Zanuck, to get made. It was a film that everyone else involved in did not believe in and assumed would be a failure. Yet the film went on to be a huge success and was a source of influence for countless film makers and endures as a classic of the golden era of Hollywood. On the face of it, Laura was in the mode of film noir, with the conventional detective investigating the murder of a glamorous and enthralling woman-as-femme-fatale; the film offers the usual twists in narrative structure and the dubious relationships and men surrounding the central figure, and their obsessions, or neuroses; but visually the film separates itself from the dark shadows and brooding atmosphere of the conventional noir films, and brings an obsessive, illuminating Freudian drama of sexual emasculation and the fundamental flaws of masculine desire.

Dana Andrews's investigating detective McPherson, is assigned to the murder case of Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), an assured, successful woman, surrounded by seemingly rich and powerful men, who was gunned down in her apartment. As he uncovers information about Laura, helped by a portrait hanging on her living room wall, McPherson, like the men he interviews, becomes obsessed with the woman, as her delightful character, and her determined but innocent-like attractiveness envelops him. Clifton Webb's overtly dandy Waldo, a successful columnist, displays his love of Laura through his detailed recollections of their relationship, whilst the charming yet alarmingly vacant Shelby (Vincent Price), a man having affairs with noticeably more than one woman, is the more darkly sinister of the two, and often (perhaps innocently) implicates himself in the murder. About halfway through the film there is a huge narrative shift, which at first is jarring, as the audience is not sure if this is the fantasy or dream of McPherson, but the revelation shifts the story, questioning the reality of the two main suspects.

As McPherson is drawn into the elusive Laura's lifestyle, the central focus of much of the narrative is set in the presence of a painting of Laura hanging in her room. It is an idealisation of the woman - she appears dominating in the picture - an image that is captured not by Laura, but by the men around her. This image is easier to handle that the real thing, it is a passive version of the woman. Whilst a lot is put upon the sexual power that Laura has on these men, it is the neuroses and imbalanced psyches of the men. But Laura, as we discover, is a more individual, independent woman, who perhaps does not require the desire of others. So the fantasised painted version of her can be contained and controlled. A reading could suggest that the power that Laura has over these men somehow perpetuates the incitement to murder, but in fact it would be easier to read that it is the breakdown of the masculine that is the determining factor in murder, and not necessarily a woman who is unsure of her decisions when it comes to settling.

The performances are phenomenal here. Andrew's hard-boiled detective is excellent, with his proto-Columbo style of investigation, playing games with the suspects, and forcing them into corners. Price and Webb are brilliantly over-the-top - Price giving a sinister performance through the disguise of charisma. But, inevitably, the titular character, through the mysterious, seductive beauty of Tierney, is awesome in a tricksy way. She is not necessarily the traditional femme fatale, she is not consciously playing these men, yet at times the audience is unsure. Is she twisting the delusions of these men to her will? Or is she as sweet as she sometimes appears? It is an almost perfect performance.

The influence of this film is undisputed. The James Elroy novel, The Black Dahlia, whilst loosely based on a true-life crime, was undoubtedly broadened by Laura's influence. The Black Dahlia has the central theme of the obsession by an investigator of a dead woman. These themes of obsession must have been directly correlated by David Lynch and Mark Frost when they wrote and conceived of Twin Peaks which began with the death of a high school girl, and the subsequent investigation unravels levels of obsession in a small community, much of which extended from this one girl. It's a wonderful, twisty, and often surprising story that illustrates that the power of women is not always a product of feminine knowing, but the failures and compulsions of weak, lonely men.


Directed by: Otto Preminger
Starring: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price
Country: USA

Rating: *****

Marc Ivamy