FILM
Laura directed by Otto Preminger at the Coolidge Corner Theater February 14 at 7:30 pm
Lovers and lovers of love alike should fall to their knees before the Coolidge Corner Theater's management. The Theater's screening of "Laura" on Valentine's Day performs a double service. Those in love will find ecstatic inspiration, and those loveless unfortunates will leave the theater condemned to pine for Gene Tierney for eternity. Celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, Otto Preminger's classic film noir is the quintessential love story.
During the openings credits, the audience experiences sensory overload. Preminger forces them to stare for several minutes at a portrait of Gene Tierney, from whose eyes David Raksin's legendary theme music seems to emanate.
In the first scene, Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) of the New York Police Department is investigating the murder of Laura, the woman in the portrait. McPherson rounds up a delicious list of suspects. There is Laura's fiance Shelby, a Southern gigolo played by a very young and dapper Vincent Price. There is also Laura's aunt, who is having an affair with Shelby. And lastly, there's Waldo Lydeker (Clifton Webb), an acid-tongued newspaper columnist whose pen, in his own words, is dipped in poison.
The investigation force McPherson to spend a great deal of time in Laura's apartment, prying into every aspect of her life. He peruses her letters and reads her diary. He goes through her clothes and smells her perfume. He drinks her Scotch while staring at her portrait in the living room. Hard-boiled detective Mark McPherson has fallen in love with a dead woman.
In what has got to be one of cinema's most striking scenes, Laura comes back to life. Well, sort of. Mark had fallen asleep staring at Laura's portrait, and wakes up to find Laura entering the apartment. The look on his face is one of absolutely sublime confusion. Andrews' face registers shock, amazement, and hesitant bliss' he isn't sure whether he is dreaming, or whether Laura has indeed risen from the dead.
Events prove much more mundane, but events aren't the issue. That instant of confusion says as much about love as anything that has ever been put on film. As it happens, Laura was not murdered but was away for the weekend; the dead girl turns out to be a model from the ad agency which employs Laura. The confusion came about because the victim was wearing Laura's clothes when she had her face blown off.
This development really sets the story going, but the whodunnit plot, like all the other technical elements, pale in insignificance before the ineffable passion at the film's core. The performers, especially Webb and Andrews, are excellent. The script is fantastic, full of acerbic wit and deadpan humor. The cinematography is suitably noir, but punctuated by bursts of radiance. And the music--ahhh, the music--is like a lover blowing in one's ear. But what really counts in "Laura" is love--from tender affection to sweeping passion. Mark's love for Laura has a desperate edge to it; thinking her lost forever, he determines never to lose her again after her miraculous resurrection.
It is impossible not to sympathize with Mark. Is there anyone incapable of falling in love with Gene Tierney? She was quite possibly the most beautiful woman to grace Hollywood's Golden Age. Her patrician cheekbones were a battlefield where light and shadows made love. Her mouth, a swathe of pomegranate, revealed glimpses of charmingly imperfect teeth. However, it was her eyes that assured her immortality. Drops of black fire, raindrops at night, Gene Tierney's eyes invited annihilation.
Gene Tierney died two years ago, plunging the world into darkness. But for those of us in love with her, her resurrection is never in doubt. At a screening like the Coolidge Theater's, we can stare at her to our hearts' content, and she will come alive in the darkness as she did so long ago for Mark.
