![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yesterday I watched Laura (1944), which you’d think I would have done before now, since I’ve been aware of the film for decades, and it has Vincent Price in it.
I notice most descriptions call it “a film noir classic.” I don’t think it’s film noir. For one thing, if it were (spoilers ahoy),I’d have spend a lot more of the second half wondering if the return of Laura Hunt, the subject of the murder investigation being conducted by Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) is a dream, or whether she’s a ghost or something.
There’s reason enough to consider the former— we saw McPherson nod off just before Laura (Gene Tierney) walked back in through her front door, wearing the floppy-brimmed hat we saw in one of the first act’s flashbacks: the detective has become sufficiently obsessed with her to draw comment from the other characters (or one of them, at least—more on him later); and even in a 1944 where the war doesn’t appear to be happening, he seems like a prime candidate for PTSD, given that one of the first things we’re told about him is that he was seriously wounded in a shootout with gangsters a few years earlier. He plays with a little handheld pinball game* that he says “keeps me calm” when suspects and witnesses complain about him taking it out while they’re talking.
But the returned Laura is as puzzled and alarmed as you’d expect a living person to be who came back from a weekend trip to find a strange policeman in her living room, and we already know she’d been about to head up to the cottage Friday night, that there was another woman in the case, that the body presumed to be Laura’s had been killed by two close-range shotgun blasts that left it identifiable only by clothing and having been found in her house. And the narrative, from there on, prefers to focus on the question of whether Laura is a killer, rather than if she’s a ghost.
A couple of those fridge-logic plot-holes struck me this morning when I was rewinding this plot: Why didn’t anyone check to see if any of Laura’s suitcases had been packed yet for her weekend trip and notice they were gone? Why haven’t the detectives noticed that Diane Redfern, the model with whom Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), Laura’s cheerfully, charmingly, sleazy fiancé has been cheating, is nowhere to be found? Even if nobody’s reported her as a missing person, you’d think they’d want to question her about Shelby’s movements or as a suspect in her own right.
According to Wikipedia, 20th-Century Fox *did* initially shoot an “it was a dream” ending, against Otto Preminger’s wishes, but ditched it after the previews, possibly due to Walter Winchell claiming he “didn’t get it.” Funny it was Winchell to say that, as I’m pretty sure he was one of the models for Waldo Leynedecker (Clifton Webb), along with Alexander Woolcott and, well, the whole Algonquin Round Table, really, except Harpo Marx and Dorothy Parker. For once I can see exactly why this movie queer-coded its villain -- so you wouldn’t spot him too quickly. Unfortunately, it’s clear from the first flashback that even if Waldo’s relationship with Laura was platonic BFF-ship, he was just as jealous and possessive as any Nice Guy™ who thinks he’s been friendzoned. I don’t know, maybe using your influence to threaten the career of any guy who tried to go steady with her wasn’t seen as a big red flag in 1944.
Waldo even complains about McPherson’s focus on Laura at a point in the story where he fully believes she’s dead. We do get some halfway decent snarky dialogue, though I think Shelby’s himbo banter is better, and the funniest bit in the movie is actually McPherson telling his captain over the phone that he’s just about to make an arrest but that he can’t yet say who, perfectly aware that an entire cocktail party has just turned their heads to stare and wait to see whom he nabs.
* The first time it’s shown, in a closeup, it looks for a split second like some kind of Gameboy or smartphone video game, and I wondered what it was doing in an old movie.
I notice most descriptions call it “a film noir classic.” I don’t think it’s film noir. For one thing, if it were (spoilers ahoy),I’d have spend a lot more of the second half wondering if the return of Laura Hunt, the subject of the murder investigation being conducted by Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) is a dream, or whether she’s a ghost or something.
There’s reason enough to consider the former— we saw McPherson nod off just before Laura (Gene Tierney) walked back in through her front door, wearing the floppy-brimmed hat we saw in one of the first act’s flashbacks: the detective has become sufficiently obsessed with her to draw comment from the other characters (or one of them, at least—more on him later); and even in a 1944 where the war doesn’t appear to be happening, he seems like a prime candidate for PTSD, given that one of the first things we’re told about him is that he was seriously wounded in a shootout with gangsters a few years earlier. He plays with a little handheld pinball game* that he says “keeps me calm” when suspects and witnesses complain about him taking it out while they’re talking.
But the returned Laura is as puzzled and alarmed as you’d expect a living person to be who came back from a weekend trip to find a strange policeman in her living room, and we already know she’d been about to head up to the cottage Friday night, that there was another woman in the case, that the body presumed to be Laura’s had been killed by two close-range shotgun blasts that left it identifiable only by clothing and having been found in her house. And the narrative, from there on, prefers to focus on the question of whether Laura is a killer, rather than if she’s a ghost.
A couple of those fridge-logic plot-holes struck me this morning when I was rewinding this plot: Why didn’t anyone check to see if any of Laura’s suitcases had been packed yet for her weekend trip and notice they were gone? Why haven’t the detectives noticed that Diane Redfern, the model with whom Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), Laura’s cheerfully, charmingly, sleazy fiancé has been cheating, is nowhere to be found? Even if nobody’s reported her as a missing person, you’d think they’d want to question her about Shelby’s movements or as a suspect in her own right.
According to Wikipedia, 20th-Century Fox *did* initially shoot an “it was a dream” ending, against Otto Preminger’s wishes, but ditched it after the previews, possibly due to Walter Winchell claiming he “didn’t get it.” Funny it was Winchell to say that, as I’m pretty sure he was one of the models for Waldo Leynedecker (Clifton Webb), along with Alexander Woolcott and, well, the whole Algonquin Round Table, really, except Harpo Marx and Dorothy Parker. For once I can see exactly why this movie queer-coded its villain -- so you wouldn’t spot him too quickly. Unfortunately, it’s clear from the first flashback that even if Waldo’s relationship with Laura was platonic BFF-ship, he was just as jealous and possessive as any Nice Guy™ who thinks he’s been friendzoned. I don’t know, maybe using your influence to threaten the career of any guy who tried to go steady with her wasn’t seen as a big red flag in 1944.
Waldo even complains about McPherson’s focus on Laura at a point in the story where he fully believes she’s dead. We do get some halfway decent snarky dialogue, though I think Shelby’s himbo banter is better, and the funniest bit in the movie is actually McPherson telling his captain over the phone that he’s just about to make an arrest but that he can’t yet say who, perfectly aware that an entire cocktail party has just turned their heads to stare and wait to see whom he nabs.
* The first time it’s shown, in a closeup, it looks for a split second like some kind of Gameboy or smartphone video game, and I wondered what it was doing in an old movie.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2020-05-25 07:36 pm (UTC)From:I feel like film noir is more an aesthetic than a set of tropes or guidelines, though. Otherwise Kiss Me Deadly wouldn't qualify based on the bonkers ending.
no subject
Date: 2020-05-26 03:46 pm (UTC)From:I've got one!
Date: 2020-05-27 05:40 am (UTC)From:Re: I've got one!
Date: 2020-05-27 08:23 am (UTC)From:What!
Date: 2020-05-27 05:44 am (UTC)From:I sentence you to listening to all of Vincent Price "The Saint" Old Tyme Radio shows until you figure out what kind of 'couple' Simon Templer and "Louie" the cabdriver are.
Re: What!
Date: 2020-05-27 03:03 pm (UTC)From: