After reading Vera Caspary’s novel Laura last year, inevitably I wanted to rewatch the 1944 adaptation. It took me longer than I expected.
LAURA (1944) stars Dana Andrews as McPherson, a homicide detective investigating the murder of Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), who got a shotgun blast to the face when she answered her door one night. Was the killer Laura’s effete Southern fiancee Shelby (Vincent Price)? Ann (Judith Anderson) who knows Shelby’s no good but wants him anyway? Perhaps Laura’s closest friend, the snide, sneering columnist Lydecker (Clifton Webb)? Complicating things, the more he learns about Laura, the more McPherson finds himself falling for a dead woman …
This is an excellent movie and I definitely prefer it to the source novel. Which is not to say it’s a perfect adaptation: we lose Laura’s strong, independent spirit and McPherson’s surprising education (he’s way smarter than he looks). Still, a terrific film. “Let me put it this way — I should be sincerely sorry to see my neighbor’s children devoured by wolves.”
After the recent adaptation of Wuthering Heights I went back and rewatched the 1939 WUTHERING HEIGHTS with Laurence Olivier as a brooding, angry Heathcliffe, Merle Oberon as Cathy and David Niven as Edgar (the impeccably British supporting cast includes Flora Robson, Donald Crips, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Leo G. Carroll, Cecil Kellaway and Miles Mander). We open on a new tenant of the Grainge arriving at Wuthering Heights on a freezing winter night, meeting an aged Heathcliffe — and when the tenant mentions seeing a woman out in the snow, Heathcliffe has a meltdown. One of the servants takes it on herself to explain and we begin a flashback to when Cathy’s father brought Heathcliffe home …
My first thought was that this was more Tragic Romance where the recent movie was Doomed Obsession; then again, Heathcliffe here comes off more obsessed, particularly after Cathy’s death. Either way it works for me; I know from LeAnn’s discussion that it includes elements the new film drops (Cathy’s mean brother, for instance) though it drops others in its turn. Worth a look. “Haunt me then — haunt your murderer!”
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