Classic Corner: Laura

When we talk about the Citizen Kane influence, we’re usually talking about technique rather than structure. (Usually.) So what’s perhaps most striking about Laura, at least for the first-time 21st century viewer, is the extent to which it was clearly a post-Kane screenplay. The script—credited to Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Betty Reinhardt, with uncredited contributions by Ring Lardner Jr., adapting Vera Casparay’s novel—begins with its title character dead, and a voice-over haunted by her spirit. “I shall never forget the weekend that Laura died,” he intones, further explaining that “I, Waldo Lydecker, was the only one that really knew her.”

Lydecker is played by the great stage actor Clifton Webb, a famed columnist (reportedly modeled on Alexander Wolcott, though there’s a fair amount of Walter Winchell in there too) first seen typing in the bathtub, Trumbo-style. He’s being questioned by Det. Lt. Mark McPherson (Dana Anderews), who is investigating the death of Laura (Gene Tierney), a beautiful ad executive who was Lydecker’s… well, who knows, really?

Laura was the subject of a grisly shotgun murder—excuse me, “A BRUTAL SLAYING,” per the newspaper boys in front of her apartment building—and there are already a handful of suspects, in which Lydecker is borderline ecstatic to be included. “To have overlooked me would’ve been a pointed insult,” he tells Det. McPherson, before asking to tag along the interviews of the other suspects, for funsies. McPherson agrees, because he doesn’t seem to have much interest in professional ethics (he hauls off and slugs another suspect in the stomach later on), and off we go.

The Kane influence comes into play when it’s time to backfill, as Lydecker takes McPherson out to dinner to tell him about his relationship with Laura. Suddenly McPherson is the newsreel reporter, tracking down everyone who knew Laura and getting conflicting versions of her past and intentions, and that could’ve worked—but they go in a very different direction, which is also mighty entertaining.

What’s wild, and frankly incongruous, about Laura is how it’s both sort of nuts and also credible. As Roger Ebert notes in his excellent analysis for The Great Movies, there are multiple pieces that don’t really add up, but “All of these absurdities and improbabilities somehow do not diminish the film’s appeal. They may even add to it.” Director Otto Preminger and his team of screenwriters construct a specific Manhattan bubble wherein everyone is wildly self-absorbed and slightly suspicious, up to and including Det. McPherson, who falls in love with the dead woman—and that’s before she walks in through the front door halfway through the picture. (“Dames are always pulling a switch on you!” he explains to a fellow cop.)

Yet it all comes across because Preminger’s direction is so smooth and skillful, and because the script is so wittily quotable. You’ll have your own favorite lines, but I narrowed it down to one from each of the key players:

  • When Waldo exhibits his jealousy for Laura’s current suitor, she snaps, “By stooping so low, you only degrade yourself, Waldo.”
  • Det. McPherson, regarding the men in Laura’s circle: “I must say, for a charming, intelligent girl, you’ve certainly surrounded yourself with a remarkable collection of dopes.”
  • And finally Lydecker, upon realizing Laura may mirror Det. McPherson’s affections: “I hope you’ll never regret what promises to be a disgustingly earthy relationship.”

There’s just something magnificent about the way Webb says earthy in that moment, the way he manages to put a sneer not on his face but into his voice, that’s sort of unforgettable. The entire performance is like that, a perfectly-tuned portrait of a man who’s lived the bulk of his adult life in a perpetual state of smug self-satisfaction. A young and clean-shaven Vincent Price appears as Shelby Carpenter, Lydecker’s chief rival for Laura’s affections, and he’s appropriately difficult to pin down, in both intention and accent (“his family’s from Kentucky,” we’re told, and Price’s stab at a Southern drawl confirms that he was no dialectician).

As for Tierney, well, the draw is understandable; she’s gorgeous and charismatic, and if the characterization is occasionally flat, that feels more like the script making her an enigma than her not figuring out how to play one. (Pairing this with the following year’s Leave Her to Heaven makes quite a case for her considerable range.) And she has an arc, which a character like this doesn’t always get; there’s a terrific moment where she finds her spine with Waldo, pointedly telling him, “For the first time in ages I know what I’m doing.” And Andrews has a strangely compelling screen presence—handsome in a face-like-a-bag-of-beans kinda way, with a withdrawn, come-to-me quality that makes his performance often seem more contemporary than those of his co-stars.

Finally, surprisingly, Laura is just a damn fine mystery, one that keeps you guessing with good suspects, clever clues, unexpected twists, and an action-packed finale. It’s the kind of movie that shouldn’t work as well as it does, and in that way, it’s a wonderful outlier.

“Laura” is streaming on the Criterion Channel.

Jason Bailey is a film critic and historian, and the author of five books. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Playlist, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Rolling Stone, Slate, and more. He is the co-host of the podcast "A Very Good Year."

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