Laura

Director Otto Preminger (middle) on the set with his cameraman Joseph LaShelle

The various looks of actress Gene Tierney

LAURA            A-                 

USA  (88 mi)  1944  d:  Otto Preminger

I shall never forget the weekend that Laura died.

—film’s opening line spoken by Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb)

While generally regarded as a prominent example of film noir, placed on all the best noir lists, found at #20, The 100 Best Film Noirs of All Time - Slant Magazine, listed at #15 by Graeme Ross at The Independent, 20 best film noirs: From Double Indemnity to Shadow of a ..., listed at #9 by Andy Crump, The 100 Best Film Noirs of All Time - Paste - Paste Magazine, while the American Film Institute rates it at #4 in their mystery film category, AFI's Top Ten Mystery - AMC Theatres, and while it does contain extreme angles and dramatic lighting, this wasn’t shot with the German Expressionist film style that is at the root of noir, with stark contrasts between shadows and light (What is Film Noir? - The Film Noir Foundation), feeling more like a hybrid of noir and romance fueled by a murder mystery.  It does, however, provide the pervasive overall mood of fatalism and doomed romanticism, including the death of the entitled character at the opening of the film.  Released just a month after Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944), which generated plenty of box office excitement and critical acclaim, the studios ushered in a new style of crime thriller shrouded in dark themes and a pervasive aura of cynicism.  While Wilder’s film unpeeled layers of concealed treachery in the sunlit Southern California locale, Preminger took aim at the witty and urbane East coast, as exemplified by the smug and sophisticated newspaper columnist and radio host Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), seen typing out his spoken narrative while naked in a bathtub, living in an extravagant penthouse apartment defined by its ornate décor, giving it a museum appearance, with a drawing room accentuated by a large oil painting of “Laura” hanging over the fireplace, presenting the façade of an illusion as one of the prevailing themes.  Under the Hays Code (Hays'd: Decoding the Classics — 'Laura' | IndieWire) censorship that regulated film content for nearly 40 years, depictions of homosexuality were forbidden, so gay characters were cloaked in innuendo.  Intruding into this perfumed world comes hardened New York police detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), a working class stiff (never once seen at the police station) investigating the brutal murder of Laura, shot before the movie began in the face by a shotgun blast.  In contrast to Lydecker’s flowery language and effeminate style, seemingly pulled from the latest Noel Coward play, McPherson speaks the tough guy noir language, frank, directly to the point, like something right out of a Raymond Chandler novel, though the film is adapted from a serialized novel by Chicago crime author Vera Caspary, who typically merged a woman’s quest for identity and love with murder plots, introducing the story over seven installments in Collier’s magazine in 1942, republished in book form the following year while also turning it into a play, finally selling the book rights to Fox studios on the cheap after unsuccessfully shopping it around, becoming a box office smash hit.  Caspary was outraged at Preminger’s portrayal of Laura, largely defined by how men perceived her, symbolized by the towering presence of that painting, which is barely mentioned in the novel, claiming the film omitted her strong individualism, which is the centerpiece of the story.  Preminger was quoted with describing Caspary’s Laura as “a nonentity with no sex,” which prompted a Caspary response, “Do you mean she never got money out of men or mink or diamonds?  That doesn't mean a girl’s sexy, Mr. Preminger, it just means she’s shrewd.  My Laura knew how to love, enjoyed more than one lover, and enjoyed her lovers lustily.”  These differences led to a feud, resulting in an infamous shouting match between the director and the writer at New York’s prestigious Stork Club.  

Hard to believe this film was made during the war years, as there’s no sign of it anywhere, yet the film has a dazzling narrative style, filled with convoluted plot twists that are simply ingenious, along with expertly drawn characters, yet there’s an overall air of sophisticated romanticism that pervades throughout, elevated by a lush musical score written by David Raksin that weaves its way through the film.  While Lydecker serves as a central narrator, providing the engaging backstory of Laura’s life, a successful advertising executive loved and respected by all, revealed in flashback sequences, the story expands, eventually told from the viewpoints of several narrators.  What stands out, however, is the razor-sharp dialogue along with superb direction, casting a spellbinding allure over the audience, as every man seems to fall in love with Laura (Gene Tierney), even though she’s dead.  Inventively leading viewers down multiple storylines, the common element seems to walk us through the threats and hazards a woman must confront in negotiating her way through a male world, where even McPherson seems to fall under her charms, as what he’s really investigating is the story of her life, caught in the web of a murder mystery, similar to Jimmy Stewart’s role in Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), particularly his mad obsession with a dead woman, becoming a psycho-thriller exploring class, crime, and sexual politics.  The enveloping characters stand out, including Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), exuding the smarmy sleaze of effete Southern charm, yet he’s a rich playboy (with bisexual suggestions) that never worked a day in his life, leeching off the success of Laura’s aunt Ann Treadwell, played by Judith Anderson, admittedly gay, known for her role as the devious Mrs. Danver from Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), in order to maintain his privileged lifestyle, yet viewed with suspicion by Lydecker, who suspects him all along.  Carpenter spews derogatory comments at Lydecker, claiming he’s interfering in his relations with Laura, where their homoerotic in-fighting grows personal, developing a detestable odor.  Lydecker’s supreme arrogance is key to unraveling his world, where his narcissistic behavior always centers around himself, with suggestions of homosexual leanings, as his only interest in Laura is strictly platonic, where she is more like arm candy, drawing attention to himself when seen together in public, so he takes her out as often as he can, keeping him in the public eye, jealous of any man she takes an interest in, wanting her all to himself.  McPherson is more like the referee between these two sparring partners, where his sanity is perceived as the voice of reason.  Nonetheless, he’s losing himself in all the drama and romantic mystique swirling around this woman, who’s too kind and polite, perhaps even angelic to be considered a femme fatale, yet it’s curious how much attention she draws even from the grave.  So it comes as a bewildering surprise when out of nowhere she simply walks into the room, startling McPherson and viewers, changing the entire perspective of the story, which must be reevaluated in a different light, altering how we view each character, with everyone now seemingly suspect in a case of mistaken identity.   It’s a bizarre plot twist that is exceedingly rare in Hollywood movies, elevating the stature of the film, even with an emotionally flat performance from Dana Andrews and a miraculous build-up of Laura’s idealized character that few actresses could live up to, including Gene Tierney, who’s a bit too wholesome and naïve, not truly aware that she’s running in the company of sharks.

Caspary’s criticisms are justified, as Laura can be assertive, but remains overly passive, continually defined by the men that surround her, lacking the fierce individualism that they exhibit, or even other comparable women of the genre, like Barbra Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944), Joan Crawford in MILDRED PIERCE (1945), Lana Turner in THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (1946), or Jane Greer in Out of the Past (1947), all of whom tower over her in stature, which actually prevents this film from more consideration into the hallowed grounds of cinema.  Still, Laura’s saving grace, just like the others, is to be underestimated by men who wrongly view her as inferior.  The tenets of film noir allow these female characters to expand their roles, becoming part of the collective American consciousness, challenging the romantic notion of love and marriage as a fantasy, given the extreme postwar disappointment of having to live in a cruel and nightmarish world, offering instead a grim or fatally-tinged notion of romanticism.  There is a certain ambiguity surrounding ambitiously flawed noir women, more detached, no longer complacent, yet capable of savoring the fruits of their labor, earning money with regularity and enjoying the empowerment it brings.  This newfound independence can be an eye-opening revelation or a confusing threat to men who still view women “in their place,” as power overall is still defined by men, remaining a patriarchal society, yet there’s something altogether attractive about the idea of a better or more equitable balance of power, where women’s behavior is legitimized as equal in every sense.  Laura is a beautiful career woman, but remains misunderstood by every man in the film, as if she’s simply too mystifying, yet she strives to break out of that stranglehold of misconception, continually defined even throughout history as a femme fatale, suggesting a fatalistic outcome.  While she is mentored as a businesswoman by Lydecker, not that different than how men succeed in business, receiving help from influential people, she quickly rises up the corporate ladder, eventually living on Park Avenue, yet it’s harder for her to be accepted into “the boy’s club.”  For most of the film it remains unclear not only who committed the murder but who the real victim is, where this same mystery surrounds Laura’s interior motives, rewritten by Hollywood screenwriters into a sexless creature, seemingly attracted to the wrong type of men, a closeted homosexual and a gigolo fiancé, both attracted to her beauty, but clueless to her other traits.  Men in noir films see themselves as the protagonists, men of action, with visions of heroism, while women are seductive, more pliable and passive.  When the women stand up for themselves with their own plan of action, there is inevitably a meeting of the minds, a dramatic impact, where people react to failure and disappointment differently, as some are immediately threatened, as it changes their view of themselves, altering their behavior.  How this plays out is through a fatal attraction, where it’s most curious that the leading male suspects may themselves be queer, an unconventional portrait of masculinity, particularly in a noir film, though representative of the cultured upper class, with each behaving like jilted lovers, veering more into an Agatha Christie whodunit, where someone is disturbed enough to go off the rails, violating all moral boundaries, where they’re perfectly capable of committing crimes, even murder.  This descent into the moral abyss is at the heart of film noir, offering a malignant view of existence, though there are incredulous suggestions of a happy ending.               

The Ox-Bow Incident

THE OX-BOW INCIDENT           A             

USA  (75 mi)  1943  d:  William Wellman

Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It's everything people ever have found out about justice and what's right and wrong. It's the very conscience of humanity. There can't be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience? And what is anybody's conscience except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived?

—Donald Martin (Dana Andrews)

One of the few westerns to be selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress National Film Registry, a personal favorite of both Henry Fonda and Orson Welles, where the release date of May 1943 seems significant, as the nation was at war on two battlefronts, where the idea of fighting for freedom and justice against the forces of tyranny held a particularly prominent position in the lives of Americans.  Nominated for an Academy Award, the last Best Picture nominee to receive a single award nomination, the ultimate winner was the beloved CASABLANCA (1943), considered one of the greatest and most popular films ever made, while this film did not do well at the box office.  CASABLANCA gained all the glory, and rightly so, but the power of this little film was often forgotten or ignored until television viewings brought it attention and renewed critical acclaim.  This may also be one of the best examples of the beauty of mythmaking, as this story is so perfectly told that it’s hard to tell whether this incident is mythical or based on fact.  Spare and uncompromising, this is a haunting tale about a lynch mob’s fateful rush to judgment in Western Nevada of the 1880’s, hanging three innocent men for a murder they didn’t commit, becoming a powerful indictment against prejudice and the spread of rampant mob hysteria.  The ramifications still send a repugnant air of disbelief, where perhaps the beauty lies in the reverential pause afterwards, a self-examination and somber reflection on law and order as well as culpability.  Adapted by Lamar Trotti from Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s 1940 novel, something should be said about the novelist, a Reno writer in residence for most of his life, whose father was the President of the University of Nevada, where in the 50’s the author briefly became a professor of creative writing at the University of Montana.  The Ox-Bow Incident was his first published novel and is often considered the first modern western, as it’s concise, psychologically taut and gripping throughout without resorting to formula or cliché, a timeless and iconic story about lawlessness in the American West and the need for moral order.     

The film was actually shot directly after Henry Fonda’s career defining performance in Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940), receiving a deferment to make the film before enlisting in the Navy afterwards, where he served for three years, but 20TH Century Fox executives refused to release the movie, terrified of its incendiary political implications, so it sat on the shelf for two years.  Gary Cooper turned down the lead role due to the objectionable material and the somewhat radical use of a black preacher as the moral voice of reason apparently made many white viewers uncomfortable.  For such a short and downbeat film, only 75 minutes, plenty happens, where the writing and direction are near perfect, creating a grim, ultra realistic look quite ahead of its time without a touch of false sentiment, going against the grain with an unglamorous story that has little action to speak of, but could be considered an anti-Western, moving away from those immense landscapes of Indian wars, gunfights, stagecoach robberies, or outlaw shoot outs, narrowing the focus, becoming smaller in scope, literally exposing a defining moment when no heroes rush in to save the day.  It’s an unusual opening, featuring a rougher than usual Fonda along with his sidekick Henry Morgan (who is the main character in the book, reversing roles) as they hit town after a long winter’s absence from a cattle drive.  As they stand at the bar and stare at a provocative picture hanging overhead, they sip whisky while lost in thought, barely uttering a word, yet both exhibit a wry comical flair that provides a nice prelude, a calm before the storm, as news suddenly arrives that a local cattleman has been shot, where a makeshift posse, which is really a lynch mob already gathering on the street, is formed by the deputy, as the sheriff is already out of town investigating cattle rustling.   Several men attempt to quell the erupting emotions, noting the sheriff is already on the scene, but the appearance of Major Tetley (Frank Conroy) and his twisted view of events alters the balance, a friend of the deceased all dressed up in his Confederate uniform, exuding authority and leading the charge for exacting revenge.  The entire town in this desolate region consists of only twenty or so men, yet the performances all around are chillingly effective, using simple characters with plenty of dialog evenly spread around, continually establishing various points of view, where there isn’t a second of wasted time. 

Except for an exterior opening and closing, and a beautiful transition shot into the mountains, the film is shot largely on an interior set with painted backdrops, the site of the hanging tree where people sit around and commiserate about what’s to be done, creating a stifling atmosphere of impending doom that couldn’t feel more intensely claustrophobic, where humanity runs amok with the stink of its own foul deed.  There’s seemingly nothing that can change the ominous momentum of outright horror from majority rule, an expression of civilization run off its rails, yet given a certain poignancy from unexpected sources, namely the Major’s son, Gerald (William Eythe), who has a small but influential role, as he refuses to be bullied by his overbearing father and actually offers a rare smile of compassion to one of the prisoners.  The other is the older pastor Sparks (Leigh Whippet), a black man who witnessed the lynching of his brother when he was a boy, whose sole purpose in being there is praying for the men who are about to die.  His spare renditions of Negro spirituals are not pretty, but sound raw and sorrowfully rough-edged, becoming hauntingly effective, a powerful contrast to the otherwise brutally swift proceedings.  Despite the outcry of a few, including Fonda, who’s gun is taken away from him, the sentiment of the majority is bloodlust, actually led by the terrifying cackles of Ma Grier, Jane Darwell as a lynch-loving frontier woman.  A young Anthony Quinn as a Mexican is one of the captured men, who cleverly hides his long-standing criminal background behind his feigned lack of English, but once the mob’s intentions become clear, in perfect English he proudly and defiantly confesses to knowing seven languages, but resolutely refuses to confess in any one of them as he digs a bullet out of his leg by himself, muttering with contempt “This is fine company for a man to die with.”  Dana Andrews as Donald Martin is the leader of this arrested group of three, contending he has a wife and kids at a farm nearby that he recently purchased, where they allow him to write his wife a letter before they hang them.  When they run into the sheriff afterwards, their gleeful mood quickly sours when they learn the dead man is alive and well, merely injured, and the shooter arrested.  The hushed scene at the bar at the end with all of the shamed men lined up for shots of free whisky is an enshrined moment, especially the reading of Martin’s letter (Fonda, with his face blocked by his friend’s hat) which casts a poetic eloquence on their eternally damned souls.  Curiously, the contents of the letter are never revealed in the book, so it was composed by screenwriter Lamar Trotti and remains the high point of the film.