Cult Crime Movies by Danny Peary

Author:Danny Peary [Peary, Danny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
Published: 2014-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

COPYRIGHT © 1944 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

A strange obsession: McPherson falls in love with the supposedly dead Laura by looking at her portrait.

Rouben Mamoulian claimed that he was the true director of Laura, that he filmed three quarters of the release print and prepared the remaining scenes. And Lucien Ballard, Mamoulian’s cameraman on the film, concurred. But it was Otto Preminger who brought Vera Caspary’s novel to the attention of Fox’s studio head Darryl F. Zanuck, convinced Zanuck to let him produce the picture (though not direct it), and took over as director (bringing in cameraman Joseph La Shelle) when Zanuck pulled Mamoulian off the project. And it was Preminger (who claimed to have reshot everything done by Mamoulian) who accepted sole directorial screen credit for Laura, the cult classic and revival house favorite that elevated him from minor director to one of the giants in the industry.

Mamoulian may have directed most of Laura, but the picture seems to fit better into Preminger’s oeuvre than his own. Over the next few years, in fact, Preminger would direct several films that bear remarkable similarity to Laura: Fallen Angel (1945) with Dana Andrews; Whirlpool (1949) with Gene Tierney; Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), reuniting Andrews and Tierney; and Angel Face (1952). These are all somber excursions into psychological melodrama, with brutal intonations but that deal primarily with the perversity of the mind. Repeatedly, elegance mixes with decadence, and wit with cruelty, and the conflict comes from Preminger mixing together people who don’t match. Even stylistically, Laura resembles Preminger’s later films. Fluid camerawork and long static shots blend together. Emphasis is on settings, including carpets, curtains, shelves, books, artifacts—anything that helps the viewer determine the cultural, financial, and intellectual standing of his characters. Characters and plot elements common to film noir are taken out of dark rooms, alleys, and tenements and brought into lush settings, all brightly lit, where in the background we can hear melodious music rather than the jazz riffs played in a film noir speakeasy. This is All About Eve (1950) with a mystery.

Throughout his career Preminger, who was eighty when he passed away in 1986, was preoccupied with characters that are in some way “flawed.” Eventually the flaws manifest themselves as actual physical infirmities, as in Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970); but early in his career, beginning with Laura, Preminger was more concerned with his characters’ psychological makeup. “For an intelligent woman, you surround yourself with dopes,” McPherson tells Laura. But they aren’t so much dopes as they are good-for-nothings and losers with peculiar personality traits. Shelby, once Laura’s fiancé, is a slimy, money-hungry two-timer. If you shook hands with him you would find your palm sweaty and your ring on his finger. The key is that you would find the ring on his finger because he wouldn’t think of hiding it. Time and again Shelby is caught in some lie—first by Waldo, who investigates his past, then by Laura, who

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