Noirvember Watch: Laura (1944)

Watched:  11/07/2026

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Unknown

Director:  Otto Preminger

This year for Noirvember I'm coming back to some classics of film noir.  I've been so focused on watching movies I'd not previously seen, or seen only once, that it's been *years* since I've seen some of the biggest films in the genre.

And I didn't know where to start, so I just picked Laura (1944).  

Laura is a good way to show people new to the genre what noir doesn't *have* to be.  Some have taken what Laura doesn't do as evidence it's not noir, and... fine, whatever.  I'm not here to tussle.  There's a detective - a cop, not a PI - and a murder.  But it's not exactly light through venetian blinds and femme fatales.  There's obsession a-plenty, but not much gun play.  No crime lords.  There's a woman, and she's mostly dead in the movie (spoilers) until she's not.

Mostly, the movie is *entertaining*.  Dana Andrews is in a really solid era here.  Clifton Webb had left the Broadway stage to try come play Waldo here, and he seems like he's been making movies for decades, he's so confident and solid in the role.  Vincent Price is in one of his "big, kinda dim, but handsome" roles that were his slot until horror came along the next decade.  Character actor Dorothy Adams is great here as the maid.  Judith Anderson is terrific as Laura's aunt who has designs on Vincent Price.  

And, of course, Gene Tierney as our titular character.  I won't say she was never better.  Tierney was always solid, and I like her in everything, including that most noirish of films that looks like a 1950's lifestyle painting, Leave Her to Heaven.   

Laura is not as early as, say, The Maltese Falcon but pre-dates The Big Sleep by two years - yet it arrives the same year as Double Indemnity.  Laura is nowhere near as sordid as Double Indemnity, while dabbling in the detective trope of a a cynical but forthright detective working their way through a heard of people all with incentive to lie and everyone has reasons for murder.

Bits from Laura would be stolen for other movies.  I love The Unsuspected, but it fully rips off both presumed-dead heiresses and a portrait over the fireplace.  

The haunting theme from Laura was written by David Raksin, and with lyrics from Johnny Mercer - after the fact - became a hit.  

Mostly I wonder what became of the portrait of Gene Tierney used for the movie.  I assume it's in someone's private collection, collecting dust in a prop room or destroyed long ago.

And, as David Lynch was so fond of inserting references to old Hollywood and showbiz into Twin Peaks, I've long wondered if Laura Palmer being the dead girl whom everyone loved was not a reference to this film.