The Motion Picture Laura is Extremely Good
It contains cinematography, editing, production design, and several performances
“In the current research, we report the results of six experiments, which are suggestive of a tendency for individuals to perceive attractive women as less truthful than their less attractive counterparts. We label this the femme fatale effect… When [male colleagues were] primed to feel sexually secure as opposed to generally secure (Study 5) or sexually insecure (Study 6), the femme fatale effect was eliminated, supporting our theoretical assertion that this effect is at least partially rooted in sexual insecurity.” —Leah D. Sheppard and Stefanie K. Johnston, The Femme Fatale Effect: Attractiveness is a Liability for Businesswomen’s Perceived Truthfulness, Trust, and Deservingness of Termination
Given that the original cycle of film noir began in the early 1940s, it seems unlikely that a film released in 1944 could make a coherent metacommentary on one of the genre’s main character types and that said commentary could maintain its relevance in 2022. However, the femme fatale archetype is one as old as time; with pre-noir examples ranging from Theda Bara’s iconic vamp roles to biblical figures like Salome and Jezebel. Although Otto Preminger’s Laura is widely considered one of the definitive films noir alongside works like Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) and The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953); its metacommentary destabilizes one of the genre’s most iconic elements: the femme fatale. (Spoiler alert for this 80-year old movie, I guess.)
Each of the film’s main characters has fallen in love with a version of Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) filtered through their own perspectives and egos, based on elements of but frequently completely detached from who she actually is. Before Laura resurfaces at the film’s midpoint, all we and the detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) know about her comes from the perspective of journalist and radio personality Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb). Lydecker sees himself as the man who made Laura who she is because he endorsed a pen her firm was promoting. He credits this as the inciting incident of her climb to success in the advertising business and therefore sees himself as the ultimate creator of her success.
He also takes credit for her beauty and charm, claiming that he purchased her clothes and suggested a change of hairstyle which she later adopted. The Laura that Waldo presents to McPherson—and the one that McPherson eventually falls in love with—is essentially flawless, since the woman he views as his creation must serve as a reflection of his inflated ego. A man so intelligent and refined couldn’t possibly have created a woman who is any less than ideal.
Lydecker views Laura not as an individual entity, but as an extension of himself and thus an object in his possession. He longs to own her in the same manner as he does the clock and vase he attempts to reclaim from her home. He exerts dominance over her by sabotaging her attempts at romantic relationships to prevent her from ever “belonging” to another man. He has constructed a Laura Hunt with no agency of her own, who was molded through his mentorship and thus owes him her love in return. Laura’s intention to marry Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price) and the eventual dismissal of Waldo from her life destroys that fantasy once and for all, reigniting his desire to kill her. If he can’t have her, then no one can.
In the final third of the film, McPherson assumes that Laura is the killer—partially out of the love for her fostered by Waldo’s stories. A dangerous woman is a more alluring figure than the decent and generous professional who Laura is. This dominatrix-esque sexual fantasy of the femme fatale is projected onto Laura through McPherson’s attraction to her, in direct contrast with her actual personality. Laura never behaves like Double Indemnity’s scheming, flirtatious Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck); her guilt at that moment is entirely mapped onto her via his repressed desire.
It also presents McPherson’s misogyny in that he—and by extension, the film noir audience—can’t imagine a woman of the 1940s to be conventionally attractive, career-driven, and ambivalent about marriage without having a dark side. Shelby also falls into this trap when he goes to Laura’s country home to hide the shotgun he gave her. Both men make this assumption at various points in the story because the femme fatale is a definable feminine archetype and one that was created out of heterosexual male fantasy rather than reality. It’s a tempting archetype because it erases psychological complexity, rendering the female object of desire knowable and understandable to the man infatuated with her. When McPherson is confronted with the disconnect between the artificially constructed Laura he thinks he knows and the actual human person she really is during his interrogation of her at the police station, he quickly realizes her innocence and allows her to return home.
This dichotomy is also present in the neo-noir mystery Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Robert Zemeckis, 1988) through the character of Jessica Rabbit (Kathleen Turner). In that film, the other characters have made wildly incorrect assumptions about her because of her appearance. Everyone sees her as a sexual object and can’t wrap their heads around why such a glamorous woman would be married to Roger Rabbit (Charles Fleischer). Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) suspects her of having killed R.K. Maroon (Alan Tilvern) because of this perception, even though Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) is both right there and the most exaggeratedly evil-looking villains in film history. Like the women in Sheppard and Johnston’s study, Jessica’s beauty—and Laura Hunt’s before her—prompts the other characters to assume that she is out to kill and deceive men. Neither was ever bad, they were just drawn that way.
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