Laura [Blu-ray]

Thank you, Mom and Dad
About 30 years ago, my parents , who sadly are both gone now, recommended Otto Preminger's "Laura" to me. At that time, I had only seen the notoriously bad made-for-TV version starring Lee Radziwill(!) and George Sanders. When I saw the 1944 version, I was hooked. "Laura" is one of those perfect films that draws you in every time. Now when I mean "perfect", that doesn't necessarily mean believable. "Laura" is an elegant, film noir fairy tale. I'm not really sure that Laura would end up with a rough-edged detective, but who cares? That's the magic of movies! The fact that you believe it while you're watching it is what counts. If you DON'T believe it WHILE you're watching it, that's when the trouble starts! But back to "Laura". The film is elegantly photographed, with sets that I wish I could live in. Then take a top-notch cast that features a drop-dead beautiful Gene Tierney, the acidic Clifton Webb (in an incredible screen debut), the...

Classic film noir comes to DVD in deluxe edition
A film noir classic comes to DVD for the first time packed full of more extras than expected, "Laura" tells the story of a society beauty (Gene Tierney in a career defining performance) murdered for no apparent reason. Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews in a hardboiled strong performance) investigates her murder questioning the men in her life beginning with a witty critic Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb in a deliciously droll performance and in a major come back) and playboy Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price). Seen in flashback, we discover Laura's background and how she rises from the middle class to world class society beauty with the assistance of those men in her life. Things take a surprising twist when McPherson meets the very woman who was murdered as the audience must figure out what's really going on. A marvelous suspense thriller with elements of film noir, "Laura" continues to be haunting sixty years on.

A nicely detailed transfer with rich blacks and a nicely...

Five stars for the music alone!
The theme from "Laura" is one of the most haunting ever written, by David Raksin, relatively unknown, but forever memorialized through this melody. Gene Tierney is at her peak of beauty, and she really is breathtaking in the most literal sense of the word. When I grew up this was always one of my favorite movies, and then when I re-discovered this movie as an adult, I was always mesmerized by her and by the entire cast, the score and the story, all prime examples of how great film noir can be when it's done with this amount of style and class.

SIDENOTE:
***I was not aware until recently of her tragic encounter with a female Marine at a Hollywood Canteen, during WW2. Apparently this Marine was hospitalized for German Measles, and she sneaked out of the hospital to meet her favorite movie star. She had her picture taken with GT, who was pregnant at the time, and also KISSED her, which resulted in her baby daughter being born with severe mental retardation. When Daria (the...

Click to Editorial Reviews