Laura

This isn't the first time I have seen Otto Preminger's Laura, but this is the type of film that benefits from second viewings.  Most of the time, that means that a movie is a "grower," that it gets better with repetition.  I don't know if that's true with Laura.  There are some interesting artistic things going on with the story and direction that benefit from examination, certainly, but there is a more important reason for re-watching this film: you might need to battle your common sense to enjoy this one.

Laura begins with the titular character (Gene Tierney) dead.  Detective McPherson (Dana Andrews) is on the case, but that doesn't necessarily make him the main character.  No, the film opens with narration from Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), a renowned newspaper columnist and Laura's socialite Svengali.  Apparently, Laura was a sweetheart of a girl that Lydecker took under his wing and transformed into a Someone Important.  While Lydecker never (on camera, anyway) hinted at any romance between them, he was intensely jealous of any man who entered Laura's life; he would trash his opponents in print if he could not sway Laura with wit or logic.  Nevertheless, Laura became enamored with Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), a fairly simple fellow with an aristocratic name, but not much money.  According to Shelby, the pair had become engaged...although Lydecker argues that Laura's death coincides with when she was going to break up with Shelby.  Laura's aunt, Anne (Judith Anderson) also seems to have had a romantic interest in Shelby, which is more than a little creepy.  All three paint a picture of Laura as an angel on Earth, but someone killed her --- with a shotgun blast to the face, for that matter --- so you would think that Detective McPherson's hands would be full.  They are, but things get more complicated when Laura shows up, alive and well...

"I give up.  Where's Waldo?"

I would like to start by admitting that I have a bit of a crush on Gene Tierney.  Sure, this is only the second movie I have seen her in, but I'm a pretty big fan.  Sadly, she's surprisingly bland in Laura.  She spends the first half of the movie dead and the second half being simply pleasant; I was hoping she would flaunt what enamored Lydecker, Shelby, and (perhaps) Detective McPherson, but no such luck.  In this film, she's just a pretty face.  Similarly, Dana Andrews gives a fairly boring performance as the hard-boiled detective.  He's not particularly charismatic, tough, or smart; the only things that make him stand out are his truly bizarre methods.  While Tierney and Andrews are undoubtedly the lead actors in Laura, the film belongs to Clifton Webb, and not just because the script allows him to narrate the opening (although that's always a good hint).  Webb is ridiculously entertaining as the surprisingly jealous, and yet very fey, opinion-maker.  You can argue that his character is a bit campy, but you would be doing him a disservice by qualifying it as "a bit."  Vincent Price was actually pretty good, too, in a fairly slimy role --- I'm still surprised when I see him act in non-horror movies, with his distinctive voice toned-down.

"...and though you fight to stay alive, your body starts to shiver, for no mere mortal can resist the evil of the thriller...."

Otto Preminger is a director who I have not studied extensively, but have enjoyed what I have seen so far.  Preminger may not have the directorial intent of Hitchcock, but he can be very crafty with the right story.  With Laura, Premniger abandons the common notion of explaining the idiosyncrasies of the plot and instead focuses on the overall tone of the film.  On the one hand, Laura is a ridiculously stupid movie.  And yet, with Preminger's masterful direction, the film seems mysterious and dreamlike.  This is the third time I have watched Laura (twice in a row, this time around), and I'm still not entirely sure what Preminger was intending with his direction.  Nevertheless, this is an arresting story that leaves intelligent viewers with many unresolved questions.

Like, for instance, who hangs a portrait of themselves in their own apartment?

Those questions are pretty important to Laura's legacy, though.  Film noirs are not renowned for their plausible plots, but this story sticks out as one of the least likely to happen.  First of all, Laura is not a femme fatale.  While that is not necessary for a noir, it is surprising that Laura doesn't even hint at having a dangerous edge to her.  More importantly (to me, anyway), is the likelihood of any moderately likable woman having a big-ass portrait of herself as the centerpiece of her own living room.

"...just in case you forgot whose fireplace it was"

I don't mean to argue that having your own portrait in your home, as the only featured piece of artwork, is obscene, but...well...it kind of is.  I've seen dumber self-tributes, but Laura's portrait might be the least modest I have seen since Jackass: The Movie.

I hate Jackass, but I laugh every time I see this tattoo

I can't review this film without delving into what makes it so ridiculous, but that also requires a SPOILER ALERT: Laura could very easily be partially a fantasy movie.  Gene Tierney doesn't appear outside of flashbacks until after Dana Andrews falls asleep thinking about Laura.  She is far too perfect to be a normal human being; while she doesn't always do the smart thing, Andrews is always able to easily decode her reasoning and solve  it.  For the record, though, I don't have any solid evidence that any of this is a dream sequence, aside from McPherson being asleep when the truly odd stuff began.  .  That doesn't even get into the questionable methods of Detective McPherson, though.  He allows suspects to accompany him on his rounds of questioning.  He pays absolutely no attention to now-standard CSI standards; this man hasn't seen a crime scene he hasn't soiled.  Don't even get me started on how he finds the murder weapon, examines it, and then carefully puts it back where he found it, with the intention of bringing it in as evidence in the morning.  McPherson also toys with his suspects, leading them to believe that he is going to arrest them and then stopping short.  There doesn't appear to be a greater master plan in play here; McPherson just seems to be a rude fellow.

"You're all under arrest.  Or not.  Maybe you're just dicks."

Despite these flaws, I actually enjoyed Laura.  Preminger's direction isn't spectacular, but I liked the tone of the film (aided by the score) and Clifton Webb's performance makes even the least likely things seem plausible.  Is this realistic?  Oh, God, no.  Even considering Clifton Webb as a heterosexual was laugh-out-loud ridiculous in 1944.  Is it entertaining?  I think that is undeniable.

The inclusion of Vincent Price in this film made me nostalgic for his part in the immortal Michael Jackson song, "Thriller."  When I was a child, I had dozens of nightmares featuring Michael Jackson turning into a monster and chasing me though the woods; when I finally saw the video for "Thriller" on a countdown of classic music videos fifteen years later, I realized that my fear stemmed from seeing this music video at a very young age.  For the record, though, I would like to point out that I was afraid of Michael Jackson years before it became trendy.

Leave Her to Heaven

Doesn't that title sound sappy?  At first glance,you might assume this would be a movie about a man who is grieving over his terminally ill wife.  That probably would have been a downer.  Or a very ballsy 1945 comedy.  Actually, the phrase "Leave her to heaven" comes from Hamlet, where Hamlet's daddy's ghost urges his son not to seek vengeance on his naughty mother, since heaven has a few things in store for her.  Like eternal punishment.  I've always liked that line, because it goes one step past "revenge is a dish best served cold;" it's basically saying concentrate your anger on the marginally damned, because the double- and triple-damned are going to get an ass-whoopin' either way.

Leave Her to Heaven is the story of Richard Harlan (Cornel Wilde) and his whirlwind love affair with Ellen Berent (Gene Tierney).  But you know what they say about whirlwinds, you reap what you sow.  The first clue that Ellen is zebra-in-a-tree crazy is that she introduces herself to Richard by telling him that he reminds her of her dead father.  And by "dead," I'm not talking about dead and buried, I'm talking about dead last Tuesday.  Ellen comes on strong, and since she is (in the parlance of the times) va-va-vroom and hamina-hamina, Richard goes with it.  Also a plus: she absolutely dotes on him, lavishes him with attention and affection.  She even takes him home and introduces Richard to her family, which consists of her sister, Ruth (Jeanne Crain), and her mother.  Ruth and mom are nice to Richard, but keep giving each other sideways glances.  I wonder why?  Perhaps it is because Ellen is already engaged to Russell (Vincent Price)?  Well, that can be fixed easily; Russell comes to visit and Ellen breaks up with him and announces her impending marriage to Richard.  And Richard is kind of like, "Whoa, that's news to me, but I'll go with it because you're crazy hot."  And just plain crazy.  At first, their marriage goes well.  Ellen insists on doing all the housework because she doesn't want anyone else cooking, cleaning, or anything for Richard.  But before he can high five all his friends, Richard starts to notice that Ellen has a pathological jealousy of anything or anyone that splits his attention from her.  That becomes a dangerous quality as Richard's handicapped little brother comes to live with them, and Richard's growing affection for Ruth can't be healthy either...

What a performance by Gene Tierney!  If you think Fatal Attraction is scary, then stop cheating on your wife this performance will show you how much more frightening a crazy woman can be.  She's alluring and passionate on the one hand, but on the other, she is a cool, calculating bitch.  She definitely deserved her Oscar nomination.  This could well be my favorite performance by a female character, pre-1960.  That might not seem like a huge statement, but I'm a big fan of Bogart, and that means she beats Lauren Bacall.  The rest of the cast is good, but not spectacular.  Cornel Wilde and Jeanne Crain show some moderate chemistry, but their main job is to let Tierney chew on the scenery.  It is worth pointing out that this is the first time I have seen Vincent Price in a movie where he was not creepy.  Director John M. Stahl doesn't appear to be a great director, but he got the job done.  The film looks great, though, thanks to four-time Oscar winner (including a win for this movie) for cinematography, Leon Shamroy.  He made Tierney and Crain look amazing throughout the picture, and his work on the lake scene was, while not technically spectacular, still beautiful.

Crazy Tierney...I shudder to think what happened to her other leg.

I watched this movie because I'm a big fan of noir films (at least, I haven't seen a bad one yet --- probably because I start with the famous ones), and this was described as a noir.  I would disagree with that description, and not because it was filmed in Technicolor.  There is way too much talk about love and feelings in this movie to be noir, in my opinion; emotions are something to be bottled up and alluded to with violent or mechanical imagery in noir, not laid out in the open.  Tierney is a great femme fatale, though, so I understand the confusion.  The years have been generally pretty kind to this movie.  In some ways, it is very old-fashioned, but Tierney's performance is one for the ages.  It's not perfect, but that mainly due to production values --- a nearly invalid pregnant woman doesn't have a baby bump, "late" in the mountains is still in daylight, things like that --- but some of the problems were definitely due to unimaginative direction.  For instance, there is absolutely no reason for this film to have a framing device, which makes the entire story a flashback.  There are a lot of vintage details that show this film's age, like twin beds in a honeymoon suite, but I find that sort of thing charming in movies.  At its core, this is a well-shot movie with mostly decent cast and one excellent performance.