Laura

In Manhattan, the beautiful and successful advertising executive Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) has been found murdered in her apartment. Police detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) takes the case and starts questioning the people closest to her. Chief among them is Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), a waspish newspaper columnist who took the young Laura under his wing and made her a success.

The other suspects include her charming, shiftless fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price) and her wealthy aunt Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson). Each of them remembers a different Laura, and McPherson pieces her together from flashbacks, letters, diaries and the large portrait that hangs over her fireplace.

The more he learns, the more this methodical detective finds himself drawn to the woman he is supposed to be avenging. Laura is a murder mystery, but it's also a strange, dreamlike study of fixation, and it has a famous mid-film turn that changes everything you've watched so far.

At its heart, Laura is about the gap between a real woman and the images men build of her. Waldo, Shelby and McPherson each love a version of Laura. Critics have noted that the men "hate and want her based upon an illusion: that she is the 'perfect woman.'" Preminger treats this obsessive male gaze as tragic and shows the danger of loving an idealized picture.

The film also asks who gets to tell a woman's story. Waldo opens the film as narrator, claiming he was "the only one who really knew her." When Laura finally speaks for herself, his narration disappears. The message is that people refuse to be owned, whether by possessive love, by the stories others write about them, or by the portraits that stand in for them.

The dream reading: McPherson falls asleep under Laura's portrait just before she comes back, and some critics describe the second half as "hallucinatory." It can be read as the detective's wish-fulfillment dream, in which his obsession makes her real.

Laura was made in 1944, as American film noir was taking shape, and it became one of the defining titles of the style. Critics note that it mixes the look of German Expressionism and F.W. Murnau's silent films with new ideas about obsession and fetishization.

The film established Otto Preminger as a director after a troubled production in which he replaced Rouben Mamoulian. Joseph LaShelle won an Oscar for the cinematography, and David Raksin's theme became one of the best-known pieces of film music of its time. The AFI ranks it No. 4 among the greatest American mysteries. Critics still write about it: Collider has argued that, 80 years on, no noir mystery has matched its "audacity and brilliance."

Its motif of a man falling in love with the image of a woman he believes is dead has been widely discussed as an influence on later films about obsession. Film writers today often analyze it for its treatment of the male gaze and objectification.

Audiences and critics still rank Laura among the great noirs. People most often praise Clifton Webb's venomous Waldo Lydecker, Gene Tierney's luminous presence, LaShelle's cinematography, Raksin's haunting theme and the famous mid-film twist. Critics call it "exceptionally stylized" and dreamy.

The usual criticisms are that Dana Andrews's detective is stiff, that the resolution is somewhat conventional compared with the daring premise, and that the film drags in places. Some modern viewers are uneasy about how romantically it treats obsession. Overall, it is regarded as a stylish, witty and unsettling classic.