Laura Review
With its collection of decadent New Yorkers embroiled in a murder mystery, Otto_Preminger's hit Laura (1944) stands as an early, elegantly crafted film noir. Preminger's low-key approach to a story of lethal obsession allows the suggestions of sexual deviance emanating from Clifton_Webb's epicene critic Lydecker, Dana_Andrews's cynical yet besotted necrophiliac cop, and the pragmatic Vincent_Price-Judith_Anderson couple to permeate the seductively cool atmosphere. David_Raksin's famously bewitching theme invokes titular mysterious beauty Gene_Tierney, but it is questionable if the real woman can measure up to the power of portraiture and Lydecker's memory. "Proper" love may triumph but it is a compromised victory. One of the most popular suspense films of the 1940s, Laura earned Oscar nominations for Best Director, Supporting Actor for Webb, "Interior" (now Art) Direction, and the sharp screenplay based on the Vera_Caspary novel, winning the prize for Joseph LaShelle's black and white cinematography. Released the same year as Billy_Wilder's caustic noir Double_Indemnity, Laura was another intimation of the wave of cinematic darkness that would crest post-World War II. Lucia Bozzola, Rovi
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