1944 noir, dir. Otto Preminger, Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews:
IMDb. The dame is dead, blown
away with a shotgun at her front door. But who would have done it?
That mystery is of course most of the tension: everyone we meet
may be unimpressed with Detective Lieutenant McPherson, but they're
people from New York high life and contempt for the cops is quite
normal, so that doesn't make them murderers. Otherwise they seem
pleasant enough, even helpful, as McPherson gradually accrues a tail
of suspects through the initial scenes. Laura was an heiress; there
was a marriage to a gigolo in the offing; and as McPherson continues
to investigate he becomes increasingly obsessed with the dead woman
whose portrait still hangs in her apartment.
And then twists happen. If you want the plot, there are other places
to get it; instead I'll note a fascinating early turn by Vincent
Price, at this point just a Fox contract player, who betrays very
little of the Price Look until his character gets angry. Frequent
uncredited bit-part player Dorothy Adams has a very effective role as
Laura's housekeeper Bessie, turning what could easily have been a
stereotype into something that feels plausible in reality. Gene
Tierney and Dana Andrews were both relative unknowns and one gets a
feeling that they knew this could be their one chance at wide
exposure.
One character was re-cast by Preminger when he took over the failing
production from Reuben Mamoulian, the studio-assigned director,
because the original actor, Laird Cregar, was known for having
recently played Jack the Ripper in another film; and while he does
turn out to be a villain the audience shouldn't be considering that
from the start. (As a nasty cynical person I was obviously considering
everyone.)
I'm encourages by the way we come in the middle of the story: Laura
has already been murdered, the investigation has covered the basics,
and now we're in the long tail of tracking down alibis and
interviewing suspects.
Really the only thing that feels like a bit of a let-down is the
ending. Once we know who the villain is and what's going on, the final
attempts to complete the plot feel conventionally procedural, and
compared with the lush and decaying atmosphere of what's gone before
it seems unfortunately straightforward. Not that one could have done
much else, I suppose.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.