Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

“Laura” is an elegant but campy B&W “Who-Dun-What,” noted for
its witty dialogue and exquisite romantic atmosphere depicted among the
upper-class society types being confronted by a detective from the proletarian
class. It is the first major film Preminger directed and arguably his best,
in a film that he was originally fired from by 20th Century Fox’s studio
head, Darryl Zanuck, only to be rehired after his replacement Rouben Mamoulian
didn’t pan out. This didn’t stop the constant bickering between Otto and
Darryl as the studio head wanted John Hodiak for the Dana Andrews part
and he did not want newcomer Clifton Webb in the villain role, nor did
he want first-time cinematographer Joseph La Shelle to do the photography.
It is a good thing Otto won his argument, because his choices all did great
jobs. Webb, LaShell, and Preminger all received Oscar nominations, with
only the cinematographer winning. It should also be noted that Jay Dratler,
Samuel Hoffenstein, and Betty Reinhardt were nominated for best screenplay.

The French reviewers in the 1940s were the first to call this kind
of dark thriller, a noir film. It is one of six or so films they named,
with the prime model for noir being “The Maltese Falcon.”
Though “Laura“  was different in nature–it was not
based on a hard-boiled novel–it still became a prototype for this emerging
genre.

“Laura” has a majestic bent to it exhibited from the
very first scene, where a self-centered, debonair columnist/radio personality,
with an acerbic wit, Waldo Lydecker (Webb), provides the voiceover as he
sits in his bathtub writing Laura’s biography in his swank Manhattan penthouse.
He also immediately impresses the viewer with his unsavory characteristics
and sexual obsession with a woman who was just found murdered. He is being
questioned about his relationship with Laura by the detective, Mark McPherson
(Dana), who is his complete opposite. Mark is a ruggedly handsome, muscular
type, who speaks in the common-man’s vulgar tongue as compared with the
snobbish effete lingo of Waldo.

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The efficient Detective McPherson wants to know about the details
in the relationship between Waldo and the beautiful Laura, believing he
can nail the murderer by knowing something about the woman killed. Waldo
is portrayed as being obsessed with her, but their relationship was not
a sexual one but one of friendship where she got her first break through
him and she quickly moved up in the advertising world into a position of
prominence through her own ability. She could now afford a luxury townhouse
apartment and a maid. When the question of love gets kicked back to the
detective by Waldo as he asks the detective if he’s ever been in love and
he snappily retorts, “A doll in Washington Heights got a fox fur out of
me once.”

In Laura’s place Mark sees the portrait of her and finds her to be
captivating, but when asked by Waldo what he thinks he can only say: “Not
bad!” Waldo volunteers information about how obsessed he is with her and
jealous of her other boyfriends in the 5-years he knew her. He tells of
Laura falling for the artist who painted her portrait and how he broke
up that relationship by doing a hatchet job on the mediocre artist in his
newspaper column, thereby getting Laura to come to her senses and see what
a second-rate fellow he was. He also talks about her current boyfriend,
Shelby Carpenter (Price), whom he despises as being someone who is a weakling,
a scoundrel and a scam artist. Laura’s older aunt, Anne Treadwell (Judith),
is in love with Shelby and doesn’t care if his character is rotten, even
supporting the bankrupt society person from Kentucky with funds.

These three: the aunt, Shelby, and Waldo, are suspected by the detective,
who in his relentless quest to get the murderer keeps digging into Laura’s
life. He reads the love letters Waldo wrote her, her diary, and is curious
about the gifts Waldo gave her such as the big clock in her parlor. He
wonders about Shelby’s alibi and the lies he gets caught telling, and he
wonders about the key to Laura’s apartment that Shelby said he didn’t have
but which turns out he did have. He wonders if the aunt is capable of murdering
someone to marry the man she wants.

The sexual nature of the three suspects also seems deviant, as homosexual
aspects to their character furtively emerges in their mannerisms. The only
straight people are the dead Laura and the cop who fell in love with her
portrait.

The film brought out the following observable things about the suspects:
Ann seems more masculine than feminine, Shelby appears to have stereotypical
“gay” tendencies, while Waldo is a flaming bitch. They all exhibit, in
the very least, a certain amount of sexual ambiguity.

The plot twist occurs when Laura returns home Monday evening and
Mark is sitting in her living room, startled to see her. Recovering from
his shock, he learns the body discovered was of the model. He quickly puts
the puzzle together and learns that Shelby was with the model in the apartment
and that when she answered the door the intruder fired a shotgun at point-blank
range disfiguring her, which is why when the maid discovered the body it
was wrongly identified. He now adds Laura as a possible suspect, believing
jealousy could be her motive, as he catches her calling Shelby and secretly
meeting him when she leaves her apartment after saying she wouldn’t.

This leads to a maddening melodramatic conclusion as the prissy lovers
who both seem to be, oddly enough, sexually attracted to Laura — become
the two most likely suspects. The film’s theme of obsession ends on a psychopathic
note, showing which one is not willing to give up his ideal woman to the
other. As for Mark, Laura was his ideal woman when he viewed her portrait
thinking of her as dead but now that she is alive, the strong-willed and
imperfect decision-making woman becomes a greater challenge; though, of
all her other lovers, he probably stands the best chance of succeeding.

The performances of both Andrews and Webb were magnificent. The former’s
charm coming with a subtle wink of an eye. His no-nonsense one complementing
the caustic performance of Webb, who is viewed as someone ailing from a
Pygmalion complex. Also adding to the film’s pleasing aesthetics was Preminger’s
impassive direction and the arresting cinematography of La Shelle, creating
a moody atmosphere and a provocatively twisted mise-en-scéne. It
is hard to find fault with this very satisfying seductive thriller. The
film even had a great theme song, written by David Raksin especially for
the film, which takes the same name as the title.

The character Clifton Webb plays is remarkably similar to the daunting
New York critic Alexander Woollcott, who presided at the famous Algonquin
Round Table. In one scene, Webb is shown seated there when he first meets
the self-promoting Gene Tierney.

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