Laura

Laura may be named after Gene Tierney’s character, but the film is really about the men in her life and how each has a different conception of who she is. Each man has his own motivations – which the film lays out succinctly and clearly, remarkable considering the lean run time – that shape how they look at Laura. Of the three men, played by Clifton Webb, Dana Andrews, and Vincent Price, the film seems most interested in Webb’s character, Waldo Lydecker. The other two have their time in the spotlight – Price’s character “loves” Laura because she will help him get rid of his dark past, and Andrew’s detective falls for the Laura represented in the portrait hanging on the wall of her apartment, only to discover that the painting’s subject is luminescent enough to break through the carefully crafted cloud of pessimism and inauthenticity that he wears like his tipped fedora – but Webb shines the brightest. By the end of the film, I wasn’t sure whether Lydecker wanted to love, possess, or in some hidden way, be Laura.

Gene Tierney’s performance as Laura is fantastic because of the unique star quality that she brought to all her pictures: she could be an otherworldly beauty and still relate to the audience as a living character – what I mean by living is that she is authentic; playing the title role does not seem to be a mask that she’s putting on, but rather a life that she’s inhabiting. Laura works as a film because Tierney’s portrayal lives up to the hype. Orson Welles called these types of acting jobs “star roles”: the actor would arrive near the end of act two or just before intermission, after having been talked about in absentia by the other characters for most of the play or film. Tierney enters and the audience immediately understands each man’s obsession with her.

Laura blends different genres – noir, romance, light comedy – into a satisfying narrative, with twists that actually carry heft, and a conclusion that had me biting my nails. Laura is not what the men in her life have made her; she lives and breathes because of her ambition and because of Tierney, who commands the viewers’ attention whenever she occupies the screen.