A_Different_Drummer Review of Laura

Laura (1944)

A stunner in its day .... but feels like a stage-play today

[7/10 · 21 January 2014]

Bit of a change of pace for me here. I spent most of time on the IMDb drawing people's attention to films and TV shows that never got the respect they deserve. Most of the films I review have an IMDb rating which is too low. LAURA on the other hand, currently (as I write this) with a running score in the high 8's, is not a film I would consider under-rated. If anything, the score is just a tad, a touch, a whisker, too high. Here is the skinny: in its day this film was a revelation. Even in its genre, it was a standout. The idea of falling in love with a picture is something you would expect in a fantasy or tear-jerker, not a police procedural or mystery. The audiences that saw it in a theatre were gob-smacked and (with the trick ending which I will NOT discuss) justifiably so. But, the musical question, does it hold up well today? I am not so sure. We are talking about a film where the character playing the hook, the draw, is, for all argument's sake, not actually there. Like John Cleese would say in the infamous DEAD PARROT skit, dead, deceased, no longer among the living. Therefore the film has to be carried by those talking about her. And to this wizened old reviewer, much of those scenes resemble the "living room" pieces in the old Charlie Chaplin films, where the exposition, however interesting, proceeds much like a stage play, with various characters banging lines of dialogue back and forth. If you want to see something from the period which is just as spectacular today as it was then, see PORTRAIT OF JENNIE .. this is not an ad, I don't get a commission if you do, I'm just saying...