This isn’t a Hitchcock film but somehow it felt like one. It was directed by Otto Preminger and the screenplay was adapted from a novel by Vera Caspary written a year earlier, 1943z
Laura feels totally like an Alfred Hitchcock movie, it features an obsessive romance, a twisty murder mystery, and a dark, moody style. You’ve got the Vertigo combination, a dead woman, with a detective falling in love with her portrait, a painting of a woman named Laura, who appears to be murdered. This obsession with a missing or dead blonde woman strongly matches Hitchcock's later classic.
It’s not a scary film but filled with creepy longing, The main character, detective Mark McPherson played by Dana Andrew’s stares at the painting of Laura Hunt, (Gene Tierny) and listens to her repeating music, living in a fantasy world.
Like many old films and I think why I love the good ones so much this is pretty much a five character story, the leading Lady, Laura, Gene Tierny, very clear in her performance here why she was a movie star, the detective, Dana Andrews, her jealous older mentor, gossip columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), Laura’s beau and intended net do well Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price) and his heiress mistress Mrs Treadwell played by Judith Anderson.
It’s directed a bit like a Noel Ciward play, staged mainly in Laura’s glamourous apartment and tells a tale with shots from present to past of a young woman’s rise from unknown stenographer in an advertising agency to high flying business woman and socialite with the help of the much older and more established (rich) Waldo Lydecker who of course is in love with her too.
Like many films of it’s time, the sets and costumes are glamourous and create the depth in this film to balance the simplicity of the locations padded out with parties, dinners, drinks and extras.
It’s a fast paced film with a couple of very interesting twists, no spoilers except to say you do get a very dramatic shoot out in the end and high suspense as the loose ends are tied up and the murderer revealed.
Not an entirely surprising reveal but done in a really good way with clever work on the part of detective McPherson to down the baddies. I won’t tell you what happens on the romantic front, or who ends up with who, suffice to say everyone gets what is coming to them like great 1940s Hollywood.
The favourite scenes for me introduced comedy and lightness to contrast the suspense themes with house domestic and cleaning lady Bessie Clary, played by Dorothy Adams.