One of the great styles in cinema which is enjoyable and
meaningful is the film noir. Even if a person is not a fan of crime, thriller
and mystery, it is very easy to appreciate film noir because of its style and execution.
A classic in film noir is the 1944 film Laura which was directed by Otto
Preminger.
When a young and attractive socialite is found dead,
Detective Lieutenant Mark McPherson steps up to solve the case. He meets her
close friend, Waldo Lydecker, who is a famous writer/ journalist. In
interviewing Lydecker he finds out about her on-the-rocks engagement to Shelby
Carpenter, a man who she nurtured both professionally and personally. McPherson
is also introduced to Ann Treadwell, a friend of Laura who is secretly in love
with Carpenter. From the descriptions he receives, McPherson decides that Laura
was an attractive and much loved woman. Slowly and steadily, over the weekend
that McPherson investigates the murder, he falls in love with Laura and makes
it his mission to figure out who the killer is, to the extent that he spends
hours in her home where she was killed. Just as McPherson seems to unlock a few
clues, an unexpected occurrence causes him to rethink his findings in the case
and spins him around on his heels.
Laura is considered a classic of film noir. It employs quite
a few elements which are considered to be indispensible to film noir, including
a narration by a character, use of thematic background score which helps create
a tension in the scene, use of toned lighting and shadows, characters smoking
cigarettes and the general theme of being a film about crime; in this
particular case, the crime is murder. It manages to create an air of
hopelessness and suffocation which seem to be the conditions of the characters in
the film, and it manages to superimpose these same emotions on its audience. It
maintains its suspense through the plot and the mystery of the killer is only
revealed in the finale of the film.
Laura is considered a classic and rightly so. Its relevance
in this day and age may leave it at just above average, but it has a class of its
own which cannot be ignored and underrated under any circumstances.
I found the film to be rather uninteresting. I couldn't find anything exceptional in it.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the story loses its relevance in our age because it is about socialites which was quite the crazy in the 40's-50's. But when it comes to style and film noir, I thought it was quite spot on. Maybe more use of shadow but that's all the complains I have about the execution. But the story still had me guessing who the murderer was until the end.
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