Laura

Laura is one of those classic films that is worth watching more than once, and I’ve watched it again after a long gap. Directed by Otto Preminger, the movie came out in 1944, the year after publication of the novel on which it is based, written by Vera Caspary.

Caspary is not an author I know much about and Laura is the only book of hers I’ve ever read. She was a writer of suspense fiction, and never created a notable series detective, which may in part explain why her reputation has not lasted as well as that of the film based on her most successful novel.

The plot is gripping, but it is the obsessive fascination that the detective has for the (apparent) victim, the eponymous and lovely Laura, that gives the story much of its appeal. Preminger plays up the dream-like quality of the narrative with considerable skill, and this adds a good deal of depth. The haunting theme tune by David Raskin, constantly repeated throughout the film, also contributes to a memorable experience.

I looked up the main actors in Wikipedia and found that Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney and Clifton Webb, for all of whom this film was their finest achievement, seem to have had troubled personal lives (the fourth star, Vincent Price, went on to, at least arguably, greater things, appearing in countless gleeful Hammer movies as well as doing the voiceover for Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’.)

One aspect of Tierney’s tragic life story startled me. It’s said that Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side took as its key plot element the incident that caused the disability of Tierney’s child (I’m phrasing it cryptically so as not to spoil the story.) I don’t know whether Christie ever acknowledged this sad ‘inspiration’, but her novel has such a similar sequence of events that coincidence would be a very unlikely explanation.