“She was quick to seize upon anything that would improve her mind or her appearance. Laura had innate breeding, but she deferred to my judgment and taste. I selected a more attractive hairdress for her. I taught her what clothes were more becoming to her. Through me, she met everyone: The famous and the infamous. Her youth and beauty, her poise and charm of manner captivated them all. She had warmth, vitality. She had authentic magnetism. Wherever we went, she stood out. Men admired her; women envied her. She became as famous as Waldo Lydecker’s walking stick and his white carnation.”

‘Laura’, directed by Otto Preminger in 1944, is an American film noir starring Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney.  Andrews plays Mark McPherson, a New York police detective who is drawn into an investigation into the murder of Laura Hunt, played by Tierney. He interviews suspects including a newspaper columnist called Waldo Lydecker, played by Clifton Webb, and Laura’s fiancé, played by Vincent Price, but in the course of these he develops an obsession with the dead girl. Halfway through the film it is revealed that shockingly, Laura isn’t dead, but instead a girl has been murdered by someone believing it was she. It’s a tangled thriller shot stylishly with an atmosphere that drifts between noir, gothic thriller and psychodrama. It feels as if Hitchcock’s ‘Rebecca’ and ‘Vertigo’ had been rammed together. The performances are melodramatic but in a way that perfectly serves the plot. Clifton Webb, in particular, creates an eccentric but creepy character, introduced whilst in the bath. He moves between a kind of ridiculous and vain harmlessness and a sense of menace seemingly without changing his method.

Would I recommend it? Yes – it’s a brilliant and sharp noir: knotty and dark with a great twist. Watch in a double bill with Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’