Otto Preminger’s Laura is a funny movie. Whether it’s supposed to be is hard to tell. The film has an earnest sense of melodrama that’s near impossible to read after half a century of irony and pastiche without seeing a playful wink coming from somewhere. But for all its grandness, the movie is strange – intentionally so
All the archetypes of film noir are here: the beautiful woman murdered, the reluctant, hard-boiled detective, the rogues gallery of potential killers. The characters are all larger than life. Our hard-boiled cop is eternally frowning, plays with a ball bearing toy while interviewing suspects whose faces he’s not shining lamps into, and, in a gothic twist, finds himself falling in love with the idealised image of the victim as represented by the glowing portraits the suspects’ offer over the course of the investigation, and, an actual part-eerie, all-sultry portrait that hangs – rather self-regardingly – above her fireplace. One of our suspects is a haughty critic-columnist who deals out impossibly camp tongue lashings – ‘Haven’t you heard of science’s latest triumph, the doorbell?’ – to our mute anti-hero; his age, hinted at impotence and mannerisms make his dalliance with titular femme fatal all the more strange – oh yeah and his name is Waldo Lydecker. Another suspect is played by an awkward but not yet Poeianly sinister Vincent ‘Thriller’ Price. Again, at times it feels like the unholy product of Tarantinoian pastiche and the Lynchian hyperweird. But it isn’t. It’s fun, strange, but wholly sincere.
Laura isn’t a film of references and nods, it’s the original thing. Time and some its actor’s subsequent career choices have made the movie seem a little sillier than originally intended, but its borrowing from b-movie tropes and melodramatic tone would suggest that it wouldn’t lose any sleep at being laughed at. Spinning back around to Lynch, its noir feel, the film’s vaguely gothic-necrophiliac strain and its element of doubling are things Lynch picks up and pays homage to in Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and Preminger’s film is a much admired.
On its own terms, Laura is an engrossing murder mystery that twists and turns like the best potboilers always do. Its restored looks give a big-screen silvery shimmer to the sinister and hypnotic proceedings, but it’s the film’s inner qualities, its psychological sketches of obsession, which really excel and make the film stand out as an idiosyncratic and striking example of the genre.
