Review: Laura (1944)

* * * 1/2
Director: Otto Preminger
Starring: Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson

Laura is one of the most atmospheric films I’ve ever seen. It unfolds like a dream as detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) attempts to solve the murder of Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), a woman who seems to enchant every man she meets – including Mark himself. It’s a film that works best if you don’t spend too much time thinking about it while you’re watching it (on the final analysis any of the potential murderers would make just as much sense as the next), but just let yourself float along with the story.

It begins with Laura already dead, brutally murdered by having a shotgun unloaded in her face. Mark makes the rounds, questioning the people who knew Laura the best, a club which includes acerbic and erudite Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), socialite Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), and Laura’s fiancée, Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price). Mark is perhaps overly devoted to the case and it isn’t long before Waldo hits on the real reason why Mark is constantly returning to the scene of the crime – he’s fallen in love with Laura, whom he’s encountered only as a corpse and from the portrait hanging in her apartment.

The idea of images is central to the film, especially the image of Laura herself. Mark is in love with the idea of Laura, and so are Waldo and Shelby. Laura’s relationships with Waldo and Shelby are characterized as a love triangle, but it’s difficult to imagine that either of these characters is really interested in Laura romantically. Shelby is a gold digger who wants Laura’s money – or any woman’s money, as it turns out – and Waldo wants to control Laura, whom he sees as a kind of protégée. Both also, perhaps, want to use Laura as a symbol of their heterosexuality. Both characters are overtly effete – Waldo, especially, who in the first scene more or less attempts to seduce Mark from his bathtub.

Images, and the creation of images, further come into play through Laura’s occupation. She’s in the advertising industry, which is how she comes to meet Waldo, and how Shelby comes to make a living for himself after she offers him a job. All three are involved in selling the idea of products, just as Waldo and Shelby are attempting to use Laura to sell the idea of their heterosexuality, and just as nearly everybody will be called upon to sell the idea of their innocence.

Laura is a really compact film, told at a brisk pace. The plot is as delightfully convoluted as those of most noir stories and the supporting cast of rogues and scoundrels is wonderfully put together. The performance by Webb is especially engaging and fun to watch, sort of like a cross between Addison DeWitt from All About Eve and Joel Cairo from The Maltese Falcon. As the two leads, Tierney and Andrews look great (the film makes great use of Tierney’s stunning facial features in an interrogation scene) playing characters who are, by design, very one-dimensional (this is a movie about images, after all). Andrews, especially, is self-consciously stiff as the straight-laced cop who takes a drink like he’s a Ken doll whose arms don’t unbend. The direction by the great Otto Preminger is simple and unintrusive, allowing the viewer to simply get sucked in to this marvellous, dream-like story.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)

Director: William A. Wellman
Starring: Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Harry Morgan

The Ox-Bow Incident is William A. Wellman’s short but powerful condemnation of mob mentality and vigilante justice. In recent years, it has seemed especially pertinent for the way it examines the harm done by Shoot First, Ask Questions later attitudes and knee-jerk reactions which demand the rounding up of someone - anyone - for punishment in order to satisfy society’s need for immediate justice. This is an angry film which examines an ugly subject.

It begins with Gil and Art (Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan) who drift into the little town just in time for the announcement that a local farmer has been murdered and his cattle stolen. The Sheriff is out of town and the Deputy decides that instead of waiting for him, he'll form a posse and find the rustlers himself. The Judge (Matt Briggs) objects to the idea, but in the face of a gang of bored, rough and tumble men, this ineffective authority figure is easily over-ruled. Gil and Art go along, partly to avoid being accused of being the rustlers themselves through their dissention, but also as two of the handful of people who are going specifically to see that things don’t get out of hand. This handful ultimately proves to be futile against the rest of the mob. Three men are found, determined to be the rustlers and hanged without trial or proper examination of the evidence.

What’s great about this film is the way that it dissects mob mentality. We see the posse as it is forming, it’s members riled up and ready to deliver justice, but there’s the sense that what this is really about is a gang of bored people (all men, save one) who are excited about the chance to do something, don’t really take the matter as seriously as they should, and aren’t thinking about the fact that they’re excited about the prospect of maybe getting to kill other human beings. When they find the three men – which includes Dana Andrews as Donald Martin – their eagerness is still clear, though beginning slightly to ebb, especially as it becomes more and more apparent that the three men will be hanged without being brought back to town for trial. When the moment finally comes and the three men, nooses around their necks are placed on horses, Major Tetley (William Eythe) has a difficult time finding volunteers to get the horses off and running. No one really wants to be responsible for these deaths, which at some level they know to be unjust. Eventually the act is carried out and the three men die. The Sheriff rides up shortly thereafter, is horrified by what he sees and reveals that the farmer who was supposedly murdered is actually alive and that Martin’s story is true: he had bought the cattle, fair and square, which means that all three have been murdered to satiate the bored bloodlust of the town.

The dejected posse returns to town and sentiment begins to turn against Tetley, who is seen as having been the leader. There’s a suggestion that he ought to be hanged. “You sure are one for hanging,” Gil says with disgust. They’ve learned nothing. They still believe that there’s no problem that can’t be solved at the end of a gun or in the center of a noose. It is only when Gil reads the letter that Martin had written to his wife, which includes the lines: “They don’t seem to realize what they’re doing. They’re the ones I feel sorry for. ’Cause it’ll be over for me in a little while, but they’ll have to go on remembering for the rest of their lives. A man just naturally can’t take the law into his own hands and hang people without hurting everybody in the world,” that the real weight of what has happened begins to settle upon the town.

The characters are well-drawn. There are clear leaders and clear followers who will never have the courage to turn against the leaders – at least not unless everyone else is doing it, too. There are also the men who stand against the mob, which include Tetley’s son, who is coded as being potentially gay and certainly “weak” in the eyes of his father, and who is forced to come along by Tetley’s belief that it will make a man out of him. Some of the characters, like Tetley and his son, Gil and Art, Davies (Harry Davenport) the leader of the dissenters, and Jenny Grier (Jane Darwell) the lone woman in the posse, stand out, but this is ultimately an ensemble film and the size of the cast is always prominent in order to foreground the danger of a group of people who insist that you’re either with them or against them.

The Ox-Bow Incident is a short film, running just over an hour, but the economy of its storytelling is part of its power. This all happens fast, which is part of the film’s critique, because justice shouldn’t be fast – trial, arrest, execution in under an hour – it should be measured and certain. The focus is on the horrible act of the mob, but there are also hints about life outside this incident. There’s a woman Gil came back to town to see, whom he learns has run off and gotten married. They see each other briefly and he meets her new husband. The scene has nothing to do with the central story, but it does provide Henry Fonda with the opportunity to make one of the best The Hell? faces ever captured on screen. There are also suggestions throughout the film about Tetley, about his military experiences and his marriage. We never know the full story, but these vague suspicions help to cloud our view of him and suggest reasons other than the hangings for his own suicide at the end.

Made in 1943, this is a timeless work of art. It will always be relevant but seems especially so today when we read about injustices excused by the fact that a war is being fought on terror. Consider the scene where the posse questions the three men, going at them until they break down and give the answers the mob wants, even if it’s not the truth. “There’s truth in lies, too, if you can get enough of them,” Tetley states. This is a story that continues to echo in our own time.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Director: William Wyler
Starring: Frederic March, Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright

The Best Years of Our Lives is one of the few films that can be accurately described as timeless. It is a film that’s as powerful today as it was when it was released in 1946, when it was both a critical and commercial success and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. This is a film about coming home from war and finding it changed, returning to a life that fits like clothing you’ve outgrown. At once heartbreaking and uplifting, joyous and sad, it is above all a powerful statement about the cultural narratives and myths surrounding the idea of war.

The story centers on three ex-servicemen: Al (Frederic March), Fred (Dana Andrews), and Homer (Harold Russell), who meet, discover that they’re from the same home town, and get back to it together. Homer is the first to arrive home and his reunion with his family is marked by a mixture of happiness and uncertainty. He’s lost both hands and he and his loved ones are tentative as they approach each other. No amount of training could prepare him or the other men for the human element of returning home, for the way people will treat them and the ways that they’re almost strangers to people they’ve known all their lives.

Al is the next to go home, and his return is one of the great moments in cinema as he walks in the door and puts his finger to his lips so that his children won’t announce his presence. His wife, Milly (Myrna Loy), calls from the kitchen to ask who was at the door and slowly realizes that it must be Al. She goes into the hallway, looks at him for a moment, and then runs into his arms. Fred has a less welcoming homecoming when he finds that the woman he married before going overseas is nowhere to be found.

Soon after returning home, the intensity of these domestic scenes becomes too much for all three men, and they find themselves at the bar owned by Homer’s uncle. After Homer leaves, Fred and Al, along with Milly and their daughter, Peggy, (Teresa Wright), spread the party over the rest of the town until Milly and Peggy can finally convince the two men that enough’s enough and bring them home to get some sleep. Fred ends up at Al and Milly’s house after being unable to gain entry to his own (his wife is still MIA), and when he’s awakened the next morning by Peggy, it’s the beginning of a love affair, though neither knows it yet.

The lives of the three men are irrevocably altered and each struggles to be relevant in a changed world. Al was a banker before and returns to his job now charged with the task of granting or refusing loans to men returned from overseas. A conflict arises in him because the banker in him knows that his first client is a bad risk, but the serviceman in him wants to give him a chance. He grants the loan and is forced to explain himself. “I tell you this man Novak is okay. His ‘collateral’ is in his hands, in his heart and his guts. It’s in his right as a citizen.” This is one of many instances where the film is critical of the treatment of veterans, expressing that anyone who risks their life for their country has the right to return to it and be repaid. Another moment comes when Fred returns to his former workplace, seeking a better job than the one he had before. The manager tells him that since he has no applicable training, he can’t be promoted to a higher position. Fred points out that he was fighting in a war during the time he might have had training, but the manager is unmoved. Fred walks out but is eventually forced to return and accept his old job working as a soda jerk in order to support himself and his wife, Marie (Virginia Mayo). The scene where the film is most critical of public reception of veterans comes when a stranger expresses to Homer that he lost his hands for nothing, that the war was pointless and driven by corrupt governmental powers. This is a striking moment, especially when seen today, and one of many which keeps the film seeming so fresh.

Director William Wyler guides the film with a light touch, guiding it towards the right notes and never allowing the material to become heavy handed or preachy. When Fred reconnects with his wife, we sense immediately that both were so caught up in the romantic idea of Fred going to war and coming home to Marie, that neither really bothered getting to know the other. Marie likes Fred’s uniform, which he of course no longer has a reason to wear. Fred wants a down-to-earth wife, which Marie, who likes to party, certainly is not. What Fred wants, he discovers, is to be with Peggy. She wants the same and announces to her parents one night that she intends to break up Fred’s marriage. Her parents are understandably unhappy about this, but receive the news calmly and the scene leads to a great speech by Loy about the struggle to maintain a relationship. Frederic March gets a number of scenes in which to show his considerable talent, my favourite coming after Peggy’s announcement, when Al goes to meet Fred. They sit across the table from each other and have a clipped conversation in which a couple of things are established: 1. Al doesn’t like the idea of Peggy running around with a married man; 2. Al wants to remain friends with Fred, but not if he puts Peggy in a compromising position; and 3. Al ultimately recognizes that Peggy has become an adult in his absence and understands that he has to let her make her own mistakes.

This is a wonderful and moving film with too many fantastic moments to name. If forced to choose the most powerful, I would have to say it’s the scene where Homer shows his fiancée Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell) just what his night time ritual entails, when he must remove his hooks and be “helpless as a baby” until someone can put them back on for him again in the morning. This scene transcends mere fiction because it was a fact of Harold Russell’s life. I dare you to try to watch it without getting misty.