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.               

Rebecca

REBECCA           B            
USA  (131 mi)  1940  d:  Alfred Hitchcock

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
 
—The Idea of Order at Key West, Wallace Stevens, 1934

Hitchcock spent the first seven years in Hollywood as an employee of David O. Selznick, both admirers, by the way, of Cecil B. DeMille.  On Hitchcock’s first film REBECCA, a sumptuous melodrama and painful study in guilt and anxiety, exploring themes of love, class, deception, fear, obsession and power, there’s little Hitchcockian suspense, but plenty of psychological elements at play from a haunted house, an unseen character, and in the conflicting personalities, with one continually fumbling about completely petrified of the other.  Selznick controlled the script, edited the film, ordered retakes, re-recorded most of the dialogue, and in some cases directed scenes himself, to the point where many critics believe the film is substandard to Hitchcock’s earlier British work, and Hitchcock himself is quoted in the infamous 1962 interview with François Truffaut, “Well, it’s not a Hitchcock picture.”  The exception is a single scene that has Hitchcock’s imprint all over it, the moment the disturbed housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson, Hitchcock’s only lesbian character) shows the new Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine) Rebecca’s bedroom.  Here Hitchcock evokes a terrifying fusion of sex and death in a thinly veiled fantasy conjuring up the dead with Rebecca watching over her husband in bed with his new wife.  It’s a startling moment that offers a hint of what might have been if the director was under less interference.  In Hitchcock’s mind, it’s a film that got away, not really holding together well, feeling painfully uneven, not a work he’s particularly proud of, but it’s a film with cinematic force and ideas, where much of his subsequent work is haunted by a similar Gothic imagination, including one of his next films Suspicion (1943) working with the same lead actress, where she may be even more terrified while winning the Academy Award for Best Actress.  Perhaps even more important is the groundwork the film lays for what is arguably Hitchcock’s greatest work, Vertigo (1958), a film of intense personal devastation and lost love, where the ghosts of the dead rise from their graves and wreak havoc on the living, one of the preeminent films about obsession.  Billed as a successor to the epic GONE WITH THE WIND (1939), Selznick was completing work on that film as he began casting for this new film, where the competition for the leading role was similar to Selznick's search for the perfect Scarlett O'Hara.  Fontaine competed against Vivien Leigh in both films, and while Leigh eventually won out as Scarlett, Fontaine was chosen to star in Hitchcock’s film.  Lead actor Laurence Olivier had just married Vivien Leigh at the time and was disappointed when she did not get the role, so he treated Joan Fontaine horribly, believing she was inexperienced and wrong for the part.  When Hitchcock found out that Fontaine was shaken up by her rude and belittling treatment, he told her that everyone on the set hated her, causing her even greater stress and discomfort, exactly what Hitchcock wanted from her performance.  Interesting that the only Hitchcock film to ever win an Academy Award, only four were ever nominated, the other three are Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1943), and SPELLBOUND (1946), is one told from a woman’s point of view, perhaps the ultimate irony considering the director’s reputation for male domination. 

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again... I came upon it suddenly; the approach masked by the unnatural growth of a vast shrub that spread in all directions... There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the gray stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and terrace.  Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand.

 
Based on Daphne du Maurier’s much beloved 1938 gothic romance novel, described as a picturization of a literary work, the opening lines from an unknown narrator have an almost ethereal storybook quality, where a giant mansion looms off in the distance, seen through a canopy of trees rising out of a gloomy fog, where the locked iron gate recalls Xanadu from Orson Welles’ CITIZEN KANE (1941) made the following year.  The thematic use of the letter “R” seen throughout the film to indicate the belongings of Rebecca, which have the effect of branding these objects, is also reminiscent of the giant letter “K” for Charles Foster Kane.  What’s immediately apparent is the British influence of the film, as it’s completely a British picture, where the du Maurier story, the actors, including a group that relocated to Hollywood, and a similarly relocated director are all British, complete with manners of etiquette and British accents, where the couple meets, surprisingly enough, in Monte Carlo.  Joan Fontaine is in her first starring role and Hitchcock uses that to showcase the character’s vulnerability and at times her frustrating naiveté as a shy young woman whose name, significantly enough, is never revealed, overshadowed by the nonstop conversation of her overbearing employer, Mrs. Van Hopper (Florence Bates), who speaks endlessly about aristocratic gossip and whatnot, and is bored to tears that no one of significance happens to be at the hotel.  When she happens upon an aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier), she literally pounces on him, but he steers clear of her, keeping his eyes on her quiet, young companion before making a hasty exit.  Their early courtship takes place under the guise of tennis lessons, with Mrs. Hopper conveniently ill and confined to her bed, where Fontaine is literally swept off her feet by picturesque drives along the sea, where it’s obvious the more elegantly sophisticated Maxim enjoys the fact she hasn’t been stained by the upper-class air of pretense that surrounds his world, yet she’s a fragile stranger in a strange land who looks like she could fall apart at any minute.  All apprehensive eyebrows and second-guessing, Fontaine shines because she naturally exudes a quality that she herself seems unaware of, where she’s completely caught off guard when he proposes, as is the innocently deceived Mrs. Hopper, who all along continued to think that she was the object of everyone’s attention.   The rapturous entrance into Manderlay is like being transported into another world, where the newly titled Mrs. de Winter is a name she has to grow into, as she hasn’t a clue what to expect from this seemingly royal household, where the introduction to dozens of servants leaves her a bit bewildered and overwhelmed.  Maxim, on the other hand, immediately falls into a lifetime of routine, making little effort to understand the needs of his wife. 
 
While the film may make some faint attempt to explore contrasting social class, it’s largely dismissed by the continued arrogance of Maxim, who is simply a male version of Mrs. Van Hopper, someone so caught up in the aristocratic world of having everything at his disposal that they were born to believe the whole world revolves around them.  Accordingly, Olivier’s brooding performance is emotionally cold and not very sympathetic, where the audience quickly loses interest in his mood swings, attentive for a brief moment, but angrily dismissive the next.  Instead, it’s the introduction to the sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danver (Judith Anderson) that takes center stage, who appears like an apparition, where darkness simply surrounds her very essence, like a hanging cloud, as she expresses a cool and sneering detachment to the core.  While Mrs. de Winter tries to be polite and friendly, she is met with nothing but disdain and contempt.  Without a word from her husband, all she starts hearing about from the hired help is the first Mrs. de Winter, the impeccable Rebecca, where her name echoes through the cavernous rooms like a lingering spirit, as she apparently meant everything to Maxim, ultra sophisticated, a beguiling beauty, the victim of an unfortunate boating accident a year ago, where even in her ghostly absence, she continues to reign as the lady of the house.  Whispers are heard throughout the staff reminding the second Mrs. de Winter that Maxim was so distraught that many felt he would never recover afterwards.  What’s curious about all this talk is not only how it’s affecting the second Mrs. de Winter, making her feel inept and incapable of filling Rebecca’s shoes, but also how an unseen character is suddenly dominating and hounding her life, becoming the major focus of the film, as she was in the novel, without ever making an appearance, where her presence hovers over every inch of Manderlay, like a nightmarish dream.  Fontaine is excellent as a character continually knocked off balance, where she’s constantly ill at ease, out of her depth, made to feel inadequate in this social setting, yet she remains genuine and a pure spirit, earnestly attempting to gain a footing, both with her husband and the legions of domestic helpers, but she’s continually undermined by the devious actions of Mrs. Danver, whose dark presence dominates every scene she’s in, and whose evil intentions feel little more than wicked vindictiveness. 
 

As a result, it’s the completely implied lesbian relationship between Mrs. Danver and Rebecca that is so captivating, filled with mystifying sexual overtones that match du Maurier’s own bisexuality, where the housekeeper has preserved Rebecca’s room exactly as it was, like a shrine, but it’s off limits to the rest of the household, remaining a curiously unexplored secret place where interest is only magnified by the power of her protective force, with the mysterious room guarded by Jasper the dog, the keeper of the flame, so to speak.  When Mrs. Danver finally discovers the second Mrs. de Winter alone in Rebecca’s room, always sneaking up on her when she least expects it, Danver makes it clear just how ferociously devoted she was to her dead mistress, describing in intimate detail how she used to draw her bath, help her undress for bed, comb her hair, and listen to her talk about the affairs of the day, suggesting they had no secrets from each other, sexual or otherwise, feeling the delicateness of her silk negligee, stroking it with her hand, rubbing her fur coat on the new Mrs. de Winter’s face, the ultimate act of rebuff and humiliation, suggesting she could never live up to the beauty and sophistication of Rebecca, where there’s a chilling attempt to coerce the new despised mistress of the house into suicide.  Perhaps the one item Mrs. Danver most personally associates with Rebecca is a hand designed embroidered cloth she made for her with a monogrammed letter “R” that’s placed over her pillow on her bed.  Equally intimidating for the second Mrs. de Winter is Rebecca’s monogrammed address book and stationary, where everywhere she turns, the presence of Rebecca is there staring her in the face, where she comes to believe that her husband is still madly in love with his deceased wife.  When the new Mrs. de Winter mentions her suspicions to her husband, also the hatred emanating from Mrs. Danver, he laughingly dismisses this like a silly joke, where he doesn’t take her seriously and continually treats her like a little girl, calling her his “little fool” or “my good child,” where her innocence is something he routinely dominates.  There’s always a gaping emotional distance between them, where he’s old enough to be her father as he simply dismisses her every effort, but once she matures later in the film, it’s questionable whether there are any signs of romance left.  One of the more interesting scenes is seeing the couple as their marriage is falling apart watching home movie footage of their first weeks together when they fell in love, their ghoulish faces illuminated in an enveloping darkness, a startling contrast of emotions.         
 
It’s not until late in the film that we learn the true story of Maxim’s relationship with Rebecca, an openly confessional outpouring that comes after her body has been found on a capsized boat under the sea, where an inquest is held, as this conflicts with Maxim’s earlier identification of a washed up body one year ago.  George Sanders plays a morally dubious car salesman with cynical ambitions to blackmail Maxim (a good man to blackmail, one might add), as he believes Rebecca was murdered.  This roving court investigation slows down the pace of the film, which actually drags near the end, adding many unnecessary secondary characters, which only prolongs the inevitable, where the film cleans up the darker intentions of the book.  Nonetheless, Mrs. Danver takes matters into her own hands, becoming more deliriously mad than ever, burning down Manderlay much as Selznick set fire to Tara in his previous film, both melodramatic soap operas winning Academy Awards for Best Film.  In an unusual move, Selznick also gave Orson Welles permission to do a radio adaptation of Rebecca for his Mercury Theatre of the Air, coming on the heels of his infamous production of The War of the Worlds, guaranteed to generate free publicity for the upcoming film.  It was Welles’ reading of the film that assured Selznick to keep the novel’s first person woman’s narration.  Selznick previously asked du Maurier to write the screenplay, but she refused, hating what Hitchcock did to the screen version of JAMAICA INN (1939), while the third du Maurier book adapted into a Hitchcock film was The Birds (1963).  It was director George Cukor that suggested Selnick test Joan Fontaine, who impressed him with her work on THE WOMEN (1939).  With that, Selnick’s first choice for the role dropped out, Olivia de Havilland, Fontaine’s sister who refused to test for the role.  Biographer David Thomson suggested Selznick actually fell in love with Fontaine, writing her poetry and attempting to interest her in an affair, but she was already happily involved with her future husband, British actor Brian Aherne.  Since 1936, when actors in supporting roles were first introduced, REBECCA remains the only Best Picture winner that received no Academy Awards for writing, acting, or directing. 

Note – Shortly after the 2-hour mark in the film, Hitchcock, in a hat and overcoat, can be seen in a brief appearance passing by a policeman on the street, walking next to an outdoor phone booth where George Sanders is making a call.