Abstract
Centering on an extending analysis of a brief scene in which Gene Tierney’s titular character begins preparing a pot of coffee, this chapter addresses the role of realism as an aesthetic and formal program in Otto Preminger’s Laura. It approaches this issue from a number of perspectives, from detailed interpretations of the film’s mise-en-scène and editing to theoretical considerations of issues like medium specificity to questions of gender and representation. Ultimately, the chapter reads the film allegorically, arguing that it maps a conflict between modes of perception and representation onto a story in which male characters frequently project their own idealized fantasies onto Tierney’s Laura. In revealing these fantasies to be a source of destructive violence, I argue that the film ultimate sides with those who, in Bazin’s words, put their faith in reality.
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Notes
- 1.
The next chapter will consider a paradigmatic instance of this dichotomy in Fred Zinnemann’s Act of Violence.
- 2.
Lucy Fife Donaldson, in her 2014 book Texture in Film, has done a great deal to introduce this useful critical concept into the lexicon of film analysis, and much of the following discussion is indebted to her work. At the conclusion of her study, Donaldson suggests that the most important aspect of an analysis of a given film’s texture is not our ability “to distinguish exactly which element of a film’s construction is responsible for [that] texture,” but rather “what is most significant is the interrelationship of elements.” Effective criticism, then, must “consider the fine detail, its structuring and place in the fabric” (Donaldson 2014, 168).
- 3.
See the section titled “Partially Furnished Ten-Room Apartment” in Benjamin’s One Way Street ([1928] 2009, 50).
- 4.
As Christian Keathley has argued, the clock may be seen as something of an objective correlative for Waldo’s personality: “Waldo, like the clock, holds himself rigidly, royally, proudly erect, in complete control of his body at all times” (2005, 167).
- 5.
This was a point of complaint for Thomas M. Pryor, who reviewed the film for the New York Times in 1944: “Gene Tierney simply doesn’t measure up to the word-portrait of her character. Pretty, indeed, but hardly the type of girl we had expected to meet.”
- 6.
See the chapter “The Long Take” in Henderson’s Critique of Film Theory for an extended discussion of these concepts.
- 7.
Significantly, Thompson’s analysis of the scene restricts itself almost entirely to a bare summary of action, paying little attention to specific matters of form and style.
References
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———. 2011. Umberto D: A Great Work. In Bert Cardullo, ed. André Bazin and Italian Neorealism, 111–117. New York: Continuum.
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———. 1969. Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books.
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Deyo, N. (2020). Laura: Otto Preminger’s Statement of Purpose. In: Film Noir and the Possibilities of Hollywood. Palgrave Close Readings in Film and Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37058-9_6
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