Lau­ra (1944)

Despite being a film­mak­er who refused to tie him­self down to any sin­gle genre, its remark­able how wide­ly held the gen­er­al­i­sa­tion remains that Otto Preminger’s body of work can large­ly be summed up through divi­sion into two major camps of inter­est: the epic, dia­logue dri­ven ​“social issue” pic­tures and the run of pris­tine, eccen­tric Noirs he made under con­tract to Fox in the 1940s. For a start, any such attempt at over-sim­pli­fi­ca­tion for the pur­pos­es of a Tweet-length career pré­cis allows no room for any of his strongest (Bon­jour Tristesse), his strangest (Ski­doo) or his most twist­ed (Angel Face) exam­i­na­tions of human needs and foibles.

Preminger’s fil­mog­ra­phy is one ripe for redis­cov­ery, and the upcom­ing Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma Blu-ray debut of his 1944 film, Lau­ra, is per­haps the per­fect place to begin any such jour­ney of reap­praisal. In fact, this film alone pro­vides suf­fi­cient basis to rub­bish notions of clas­si­cism that linger in pre­con­cep­tions of his work, those that fail to take into account the stark mod­ernism and sly­ly sub­ver­sive approach to both char­ac­ter and con­ven­tion that bub­ble beneath the sur­face of almost every one of his films.

That’s not to say Pre­minger entire­ly eschewed genre. Through­out his career his con­cerns lay pri­mar­i­ly in the mechan­ics of any giv­en area: the process of the court­room (and by exten­sion the court­room dra­ma as genre) in Anato­my of a Mur­der and The One Man Mutiny; the machi­na­tions of Wash­ing­ton pol­i­tics in Advise & Con­sent; and through his endur­ing com­mit­ment to strong female char­ac­ters, turn­ing the tables on the ​“Women’s Pic­ture” to cre­ate a pro­to-fem­i­nist mas­ter­piece in Daisy Kenyon.

It’s an approach that was also true of those films com­mon­ly termed his film noirs, of which Lau­ra remains his most famous and suc­cess­ful. For all its urban, rain-soaked nights and danc­ing shad­ows, one could argue that Lau­ra shares lit­tle else with the com­mon idea of what con­sti­tutes noir, util­is­ing the back­bone of dozens of mur­der-mys­tery, detec­tive dime nov­els to set up a tale of male dom­i­na­tion and psy­cho­sex­u­al pro­jec­tion, shot through with a con­temp­tu­ous­ly satir­i­cal eye on class-dri­ven social strictures.

While Lau­ra, indeed, con­tains a hard-boiled detec­tive out to solve a mur­der, there’s no femme fatale in any tra­di­tion­al sense, no woman to send him on a course towards mur­der, no pre­des­ti­na­tion laden with doom. Lau­ra Hunt is already dead, dis­fig­ured beyond recog­ni­tion by a shot­gun blast to the face, leav­ing only a por­trait as the memen­to mori around which male fas­ci­na­tion revolves. Even our point of access to the nar­ra­tive remains flu­id and ambigu­ous: whilst begin­ning with a voice-over typ­i­cal of noir, it proves to stem not from the osten­si­ble hero of the piece but from one of the prime sus­pects, Laura’s bene­fac­tor and our unre­li­able nar­ra­tor, the dev­il­ish­ly ego­ma­ni­a­cal Wal­do Lydeck­er (Clifton Webb).

Not that we can rely on detec­tive Mark McPher­son (Dana Andrews) as cus­to­di­an of our sym­pa­thies or curios­i­ty either, despite the quick shift to his per­spec­tive in the open­ing moments. His pro­fes­sion­al objec­tiv­i­ty proves as sus­cep­ti­ble to Laura’s allure as those under inves­ti­ga­tion, falling in love with the dead girl – or at least the idea of her – as recount­ed by those that knew her. Dur­ing one par­tic­u­lar­ly evoca­tive sequence, he spends an evening alone in Laura’s apart­ment, rifling through her things. Our detach­ment becomes cement­ed. It’s Preminger’s eyes through which we now mon­i­tor the sto­ry. Then, the sound of a door open­ing off-screen turns every­thing we thought we knew on to its head.

The trail­er for Lau­ra asks ​“Who is Lau­ra? What is Lau­ra?” – ques­tions that pro­vide oppos­ing posi­tions in the world of the film. Does Lau­ra Hunt exist at all oth­er than as a pro­jec­tion of the fan­tasies and desires of the male char­ac­ters? For Wal­do, Lau­ra is anoth­er trea­sure to pos­sess and dis­play, to jeal­ous­ly guard from the grips of her lover, Shel­by Car­pen­ter (Vin­cent Price), a work-shy South­ern ​‘gent’ with an eye to climb­ing the social lad­der. For him, Lau­ra is an expen­sive acces­so­ry to draw atten­tion away from his cheap suit.

There is the sense that Pre­minger is try­ing to pro­tect his Lau­ra from the rogue’s gallery of degen­er­ates that sur­round her. He allows her to fol­low her roman­tic incli­na­tions, but eschews the inter­nal life of the char­ac­ter afford­ed by Vera Cas­pary (on whose nov­el Lau­ra is based), who allowed her to nar­rate a piv­otal part of her own sto­ry. He per­sists with his vision of Lau­ra as a sex­less ves­sel for male pro­jec­tion. Like Hitchcock’s famous def­i­n­i­tion of the MacGuf­fin, Lau­ra remains an emp­ty cen­tre around which the plot can revolve.

Preminger’s direc­tion, cou­pled with Joseph LaShelle’s exquis­ite pho­tog­ra­phy, ampli­fies these oppo­si­tions in per­cep­tion of Lau­ra. The enor­mous por­trait which hangs above her fire­place and which opens the film bears lit­tle rela­tion to the image of the woman her­self as per­son­i­fied by Gene Tier­ney. Pre­minger goes a long way in his attempts to nor­malise her, to ground her as a means of con­trast to the way she’s per­ceived by those that sur­round her. One of the few times we see her in any­thing approach­ing a movie-star close-up, it’s under inter­ro­ga­tion, with a harsh, unflat­ter­ing light glar­ing in her face, insis­tent on scruti­ny, pun­ish­ing her beauty.

The objec­tiv­i­ty of the rov­ing cam­era in Lau­ra offers the first exam­ple of Preminger’s breath­tak­ing con­trol, cre­at­ing a tan­gi­ble sense of phys­i­cal space with­in the stu­dio loca­tions, most notably Laura’s apart­ment. It’s an effect that pays div­i­dends in both the cen­tral set-piece and the heart-stop­ping climax.

Famous­ly stat­ing that if he could, he’d shoot the entire film in a sin­gle take, Preminger’s approach to cam­era block­ing per­haps stems from his the­atri­cal back­ground. An empha­sis on entrances and exits, of char­ac­ters alone with their thoughts and actions with­in a giv­en space, all pro­vide psy­cho­log­i­cal insight and nar­ra­tive focus through push and pull, whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly allow­ing for a cyn­i­cal obser­va­tion­al dis­tance in still­ness when required.

Through­out his career, Pre­minger demon­strat­ed a fas­ci­na­tion for the quirks and per­ver­sions of human char­ac­ter and behav­iour, the odd­i­ties and pecu­liar­i­ties that sim­mer beneath the sur­face. Per­cep­tion and actu­al­i­ty are the oppos­ing forces that dri­ve his best work, decon­struct­ing what we think we already know to present it to us afresh. Lau­ra proves no excep­tion. It’s this excep­tion­al filmmaker’s first mas­ter­piece, but it’s cer­tain­ly not his last.

Lau­ra is avail­able via Eureka’s Mas­ters of Cin­e­ma imprint on 14 January.