Laura

The year 1944 was a milestone in the film noir cycle, the first year to produce a high number of films that would go on to become undisputed classics of the style: Double Indemnity, Murder, My Sweet, Phantom Lady, The Woman in the Window, and this film, among others. In Laura, director Otto Preminger brings a high-gloss 20th Century Fox sheen to the noir aesthetic, the visual spotlessness belying the gruesome violence at the story’s center: a shotgun blast to the title character’s face. Police detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) is assigned to investigate the brutal murder of advertising executive Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) just outside her apartment doorway: suspects include her effeminate mentor and admirer Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), her almost-fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), his older mistress and Laura’s aunt Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), and Carpenter’s other love interest Diane Redfern. Through interviews with those in Laura’s circle, McPherson begins to develop feelings for the dead girl, her image romantically preserved in a painting above her fireplace, but these feelings are in for a shock when the plot twists half-way through the film. Elitist and/or homosexual, Lydecker’s unabashed arrogance (“In my case, self-absorption is completely justified”) is fun to watch, while variations on Raksin’s famous, melodic theme, which went on to become hugely popular and was recorded by more than 400 artists, adds a symphonic unity to the production overall. Worth noting is the film’s subtle, ambivalent theme of female empowerment: while Laura’s power in the story appears to come from her attractiveness to men, she was also confident, perceptive, and highly successful in her chosen industry in 1944, a mere 25 years after American women were granted the right to vote.