Laura (1944): True Love and Murder

It’s hard to pigeonhole or to categorize a film like Laura. Trying to write about it has made me see that clearly. It is widely acclaimed as a film noir; it is one of the most famous examples of the genre. People who say that they don’t like film noir like Laura, and I think that’s because it happens to have a love story at its center.

What brought that idea into sharp focus for me was when I started taking screenshots in anticipation of writing about the film for my blog. I realized that I was taking screenshot after screenshot of Dana Andrews, one of the stars of the film and the actor playing the lead character, Detective Mark McPherson. And that made me realize how beautiful the two leads are. Gene Tierney plays Laura Hunt, McPherson’s love interest. The two of them, in fact, are too beautiful to ignore, and they are especially hard to ignore in Laura.

How to explain that phenomenon? Laura isn’t the first film noir to feature beautiful stars in the lead roles. Some might say that it’s the chemistry that they portray on-screen, but I think there’s more to it than that. In Laura, we have two beautiful stars playing characters who fall in love in the oddest of circumstances. Laura Hunt is the victim of murderous obsession, which makes her automatically sympathetic. Detective McPherson is sympathetic because he is seeking justice for a woman savagely wronged.

But after multiple viewings of the film and on closer examination, Detective McPherson’s and Laura Hunt’s flaws reveal themselves. They are still sympathetic characters; there’s no reason not to root for them all the way. But they are flawed, and that is one of the features that helps to make their noir love story so believable.

(This article about Laura contains spoilers.)

Detective McPherson reveals his flaws by the way that he conducts part of his murder investigation. Waldo Lydecker, Laura Hunt’s friend and mentor, talks about her in glowing terms with the detective when the investigation starts, but he inadvertently describes her as someone just like him, and Lydecker comes across as vain and self-centered. When Laura Hunt reappears from a long weekend away and Detective McPherson realizes that she is not the murder victim, she doesn’t act like a completely innocent bystander, and she doesn’t help the detective much in his quest for justice in the murder case.

Let me describe these three ideas in more detail.

Detective Mark McPherson

Detective Mark McPherson drinks rather heavily in Laura’s apartment while he is trying to solve her murder. He helps himself to Laura’s stash of alcohol and spends a lot of time in her apartment trying to discover more clues about her life. These clues could lead to the identity of her killer, but it does seem odd that he spends so much time there. Waldo Lydecker, a friend of Laura’s who opens the film with his voice-over narration, even points out Detective McPherson’s behavior: “McPherson, did it ever strike you that you’re acting very strangely? It’s a wonder you don’t come here like a suitor, with roses and a box of candy . . .”

Both Waldo Lydecker and Detective Mark McPherson are obsessed with Laura Hunt, but the circumstances are different for both men. Lydecker is obsessed with her while she is still alive. It’s only when he thinks that she is dead that he feels he has won complete control over her. Detective McPherson is obsessed with Laura after he commences the murder investigation. He is determined to learn who is responsible for her death, which is one reason that he spends so much time in her apartment. It is the crime scene: Her body was found just inside her front door after opening it to a visitor, presumably the murderer.

But Detective McPherson’s obsession is more benign than Waldo Lydecker’s. McPherson wants to solve the case. Lydecker may accuse him of falling in love with a corpse, but it is more complicated than that. Detective McPherson reminds me of detectives who are interviewed on true-crime shows about their involvement in their respective cases. Many of them talk of being obsessed with a case, the one that keeps them awake, the one that gnaws at them because they are afraid that they may have missed the one vital clue and because they are so afraid of letting the murder victim’s family and friends down if they don’t find justice for them. Detective McPherson’s obsession strikes me as being the kind that solves murder cases, which makes him more sympathetic, not less so.

Laura Hunt and Waldo Lydecker

The first time that Laura Hunt appears on-screen, she is rather pushy. She interrupts Waldo Lydecker at lunch at the Algonquin Hotel, and she doesn’t do so because she is a fan of his newspaper column or because she is an acquaintance of his. She wants him to endorse the Wallace Flow-Rite Pen for her advertising account. She could be described as self-absorbed, just as much so, in fact, as Waldo Lydecker. She’s mostly concerned about her own career, and when Lydecker points that out to her, she accuses him of being selfish.

Lydecker soon returns Laura’s “favor” by pushing his way into Laura’s place of employment, the Bullitt and Company ad agency, without an appointment. He has decided to endorse the Wallace Flow-Rite Pen, but he is using it as a way to get into her good graces and establish himself in her life. It’s a surprising similarity between the two that isn’t readily obvious on first viewing of the film. Lydecker’s motive is more sinister than Laura’s: He wants to exert control over her life; she wants a product endorsement. And they both get what they want—at least for a short while.

Laura Hunt and Detective Mark McPherson

Laura Hunt shows up alive in her apartment and finds Detective McPherson asleep in one of her living room chairs. She is shocked to find a stranger in her home; he is shocked that she is alive after all and that the murder victim has been misidentified. But she quickly becomes a suspect, and she doesn’t help her own cause by the way that she treats McPherson.

On the first night of Laura’s return to her apartment, Detective McPherson insists that she remain at home and stay off the telephone. McPherson does have the force of law behind him. After all, Laura was the original murder victim, and now that she has returned and someone else has been murdered in her apartment, she is one of the suspects. She promises that she will follow his instructions, but it isn’t long before she is on the phone to her boyfriend and sometime fiancé Shelby Carpenter. McPherson knows that she is on the phone and making plans because Laura’s telephone has been tapped since the start of the murder investigation. He and his partner follow her to her meeting with Carpenter.

When McPherson shows up at Laura’s apartment the next day, he confronts her immediately about her actions. Laura’s response? “You forced me to give you my word. I never have been and I never will be bound by anything I don’t do of my own free will.” Detective Mark McPherson doesn’t react to this statement, even though it’s a poor defense of one’s actions. I wonder how a judge and jury would react if Laura were on the witness stand accused of homicide and defended herself by saying that all she did was exercise her free will.

And Laura does lie to Detective McPherson about more than leaving the apartment. She also lies about seeing Shelby Carpenter. And she says one thing and then another about wanting to/not wanting to marry Carpenter. McPherson isn’t one to show his emotions, however, and his subsequent actions in his investigation reveal that he doesn’t sit idly by and let Laura, or anyone else, for that matter, get away with deception.

***

Detective Mark McPherson and Laura Hunt are still sympathetic characters, in spite of the ways that each is introduced in the film and the circumstances of their first meeting and growing attraction. They meet and get to know each other because of a murder investigation. Their flaws make them, especially Detective McPherson, more endearing, not less so.

Waldo Lydecker is one of the characters who helps them see how they feel about one another. He is quick to move in once again, as he did in Laura’s previous romantic relationships, and try to break them apart. Instead of accomplishing his goal, he reveals his true character clearly to Laura and she begins to see him as he really is.

So much has been written and said about Laura. It’s considered a classic by many who aren’t fans of film noir. Its complications are exactly why it so much more than noir, exactly why the film is so wonderful, all these years—almost eighty years—later.

October 11, 1944, release date  •  Directed by Otto Preminger  •  Screenplay by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, Betty Reinhardt, Ring Lardner, Jr.  •  Based on the 1943 novel Laura by Vera Caspary  •  Music by David Raksin  •  Edited by Louis Loeffler  •  Cinematography by Joseph LaShelle

Gene Tierney as Laura Hunt  •  Dana Andrews as Detective Lieutenant Mark McPherson  •  Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker  •  Vincent Price as Shelby Carpenter  •  Judith Anderson as Ann Treadwell  •  Dorothy Adams as Bessie Clary, Laura’s maid  •  Ralph Dunn as Detective Fred Callahan  •  Clyde Fillmore as the owner of Bullitt & Co. Ad Agency  • William Forrest as important client  •  James Flavin as Detective McEveety  •  Kathleen Howard as Louise, Ann’s cook  •  Larry Steers as man dining with Laura  •  Cara Williams as a secretary in Laura’s office  •  Eric Wilton as a restaurant patron  • John Dexter as Jacoby, the artist

Distributed by Twentieth Century Fox  •  Produced by Twentieth Century Fox