Otto Preminger’s
Laura (1944) is a mess, but it’s a fun, playful mess. The story of a police detective (Dana Andrews) who falls in love with a murder victim (Gene Tierney as the film’s namesake) while investigating the crime, this Oscar winner is both creatively ambitious and genre dependent. It’s a film about taking chances, then making a mess of things when you fail, and the final product holds true to that theme.
As hard-boiled detectives go, Dana Andrews is a pretty dull and un-resourceful one. His character falls in love with a corpse, yet we’re never invited inside to see what makes this man click, to understand the complexities of such a love…or to ever feel it with him. He’s never heroic, or anti-heroic, or really much of anything. He’s just sort of there to fill the genre requirements, and his film suffers accordingly.
