Noir-vember: Laura (1944)

Considering the many classic film noirs I have covered in my blog, I was surprised to realise that I had never praised Laura here. Given my love for it, I then decided that it was the best choice for the start of 2019's Noir-vember season here.

The radiantly beautiful Gene Tierney (and yes, I do always have to use numerous complimentary adjectives when describing one of my all-time favourite leading ladies) plays the titular female in a movie that begins with the discovery of her corpse and then moves on through numerous twists and turns until the killer is revealed. We get to know a lot about Laura through numerous flashbacks, prompted by the sassy investigating detective (Mark McPherson, played by Dana Andrews), including how she came to be friends with the acerbic newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), how messy things were getting with her fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price).

This is a murder-mystery noir movie that shows just how damaging love can be, even when it's disguised as a pure and innocent love for someone that people claim to care deeply for. Everything covered by that great driving force is here; passion, jealousy, pride, happiness and unhappiness, self-doubt and much more. Although a number of different names were credited, and uncredited, with writing the script, a lot of the credit must go to the writer of the source material, Vera Caspary, and director Otto Preminger.

Preminger has the double bonus of being able to match great material with a great cast to produce a memorable little movie. Tierney is peerless (I have seen about half a dozen of her movies now, and that opinion has not wavered), Andrews is cool and slightly hard-boiled, if not nearly as tough as he could have been, Webb is like a male Bette Davis, and battles with Price over who can deliver their dialogue best. The latter is a great mixture of awkwardness, guile and confidence. It may be odd to watch Price as a younger man, clean-shaven and not as menacing as he would be in so many of his horror movie roles, but viewers can get a lot of enjoyment from the way he cannot so much as get a drink of water without looking inordinately guilty.

I think it would be easy for many people to class this as a "rainy afternoon" movie, but if that's the case then all I can say is that I hope the weather stays bad, at least long enough for others to catch up with it. And then you can join the ranks of so many other people who have fallen in love with Gene Tierney. Because to know her is to love her, which is probably why she works so well in the main role here.

9/10

You can buy the movie here.