- It seems like everyone in New York loved the late Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney). Her most vocal proponent is Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), an effete and self-centered columnist who feels like he "was the only one who really knew her." Lydecker is so interested in Laura's death that he insists on tagging along as the oddly composed Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) investigates the case. And then there's Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), who is liked by most and yet trusted by few. Incidentally, Carpenter may have been engaged to Laura, depending on who you believe. There's also Laura's aunt Anne Treadwell (Judith Anderson) who "adored" Laura while carrying on her own strange relationship with Carpenter. Even the maid Bessie (Dorothy Adams) loved Laura enough to casually tamper with the crime scene, removing evidence that might have given a bad impression of her employer. Finally, there's Detective McPherson himself. Why is he spending so much time in Laura's apartment staring at her portrait? Is he really "in love with a corpse," as Lydecker suggests??
- Oh, and who did kill Laura Hunt, anyway? Somebody must have killed her, right?
- Well, the big surprise in the film is of course that Laura walks in halfway through the story. She wasn't dead, she was upstate! Surely this is one of the most stunning plot twists in all of film noir. It turns out the body was that of model Diane Redfern, who was killed in Laura's apartment while wearing Laura's clothes. As McPherson notes, "Dames are always pulling a switch on you." This revelation hardly reduces the total number of mysteries, though, and the detective now must work to discover who killed Diane. Initially, McPherson takes the rather unorthodox approach of scaring the hell out of people by having them walk in on Laura, but he eventually falls back on the more traditional method of trying to find the murder weapon. In a rare nod to reality, the murderer turns out to be the person we should have suspected all along.
- Otto Preminger's Laura is compelling primarily because of its strange cast of characters and the shocking resurrection of the murder victim. Although the title character is interesting enough (dead or alive), even she is eclipsed by Lydecker and McPherson. Waldo Lydecker is obviously motivated by some sort of jealousy, but he's not very convincing as a spurned lover. In fact, he seems most troubled by the idea that Laura would be subjected to the "vulgar pawing" of her various suitors, and my impression is that we are to view Lydecker as a sort of failed heterosexual. McPherson, on the other hand, is driven by a love for Laura that obviously develops long before he knows she's alive. I have seen it suggested that the entire second half of the film is the detective's dream, but I have trouble believing that he would conjure up some of the more incidental conversations. The language and imagery of the film's conclusion do suggest a certain amount of fantasy, however, as love in this case "reaches beyond the dark shadow of death." Lydecker's final radio program notes that "Out of a misty dream, our path emerges for a while, then closes within a dream," but I think it is a dream that has come true for McPherson.
- This film was obviously a huge influence on Twin Peaks. Dead girl named Laura, Waldo Lydecker, Laura's theme, Diane (Redfern), Jacoby the artist, and plenty of lines ("You are Laura Hunt, aren't you?"). Good thing I saw Twin Peaks first or I would have suspected the parrot.
