Loving Laura

My friend Sandra teased me the other day that I hadn't posted a review since I started dating my boyfriend. Since he's in Miami at a wedding this weekend, and I'm freezing in Boston, I figured it was time to update the blog. After all, I've seen about half a dozen movies since the year began. My favorite, though, was a re-viewing of my No. 2 choice for all-time greats: Laura. Film Forum hosted an Otto Preminger series earlier this month, and Laura kicked it off. (P.S. Thanks to the festival, I discovered another gem, the riveting courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder.)

I shall never forget the day I first saw Laura. A heavy, foreboding gray covered the sky like an oversize blanket, representative of the black-and-white classic’s noirish nature. It was a most humid Sunday, as I recall – but given the sold-out Film Forum screening, I most certainly did not feel like the only human being left in New York.

I’ve seen Otto Preminger’s 1944 film several times since that August day, and each time the clipped, precise intonations of Clifton Webb’s Waldo Lydecker captivate me. The fabulously melodramatic story of a detective falling in love with a murder victim receives a boost from David Raskin’s swooning score. The screenplay, based on a Vera Caspary novel, delights with its bounty of quips. Lydecker, a voice of print and radio, naturally scores the best lines; after all, he “writes with a goose quill dipped in venom” and says the secret of his charm is “I'm not kind, I'm vicious.” (Lydecker reportedly is based on theater critic and famed Algonquin wit Alexander Woollcott.)

At first, Laura seems to be a typical whodunit: The titular character (Gene Tierney), a charismatic ad executive, is found dead in her New York City apartment. The prototype gruff officer (Dana Andrews) investigates several suspects, including Laura’s pretty-boy significant other, Shelby (a young Vincent Price) and her mentor, Lydecker himself (who says that “to overlook me would have been a pointed insult”). About halfway through the movie, Detective McPherson is entranced by Laura’s portrait and her being, when who should appear but … the not-so-dead girl. And thus a new mystery begins.

Preminger sets up that fateful moment splendidly: McPherson, alcohol in hand, nods off. The camera pulls back, the door unlocks, and Laura herself casually walks in. The viewer remains as uncertain as the hazy McPherson – is this a dream or a ghost? She can’t be real, can she? Throughout the film, Preminger confidently balances the seriousness of a killing (or attempted killing) with a twisted love affair or three and several arsenic-laced bon-mots. Rarely has a thriller had so many deliberately laugh-out-loud moments, not only from Lydecker but also from Shelby, who “can afford a blemish on (his) character, but not on (his) clothes.” Preminger also teases us with shots of ornate clocks – how will they play into the final act?

Andrews and Tierney are fine, and a Redford-esque Price is a surprise for those who know him only from scary movies and the Thriller video. Still, it’s Webb’s performance that most strongly blazes more than 60 years after Laura’s release. Whether he’s arrogantly ordering the police around his house while sitting in a bathtub or sniping about “what promises to be a disgustingly earthy relationship,” Webb makes Lydecker a character to remember. Webb, a silent-film star who hadn’t acted in more than a decade, received an Academy Award nomination for his work and reinvigorated his career.

In describing Laura to McPherson, Lydecker said, “She had warmth, vitality. She had authentic magnetism.” So does Laura the movie.