A film noir classic that you can sing along to

LAURA

Thursday, Talking Pictures TV, 6.15pm

WHEN beautiful New York advertising executive Laura Hunt answers her door late one Friday night and is murdered with a shotgun blast to the face, hard-boiled, baseball-loving detective Mark McPherson is called in to investigate.

So begins director Otto Preminger’s classic 1944 film noir, which stars Dana Andrews as McPherson and a luminous Gene Tierney as the titular Laura. Who pulled the trigger and why? Who, if anyone, was with Laura in her flat when she died? McPherson sets out to answer these questions and crack the case.

Through a series of flashbacks he learns about Laura from those who were closest to her. First up is waspish, ageing newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), who takes the victim under his expensively-suited wing when she approaches him in a restaurant looking for a product endorsement for an advertising campaign she is working on. Next is Laura’s fiancé Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price, a decade before he established himself as a hammy horror movie favourite). He’s a smooth, slippery playboy who seems unusually close to Laura’s aunt, Ann Treadwell, an older socialite with many jewels and few scruples.

What state was Laura and Shelby’s relationship in when she was murdered? Finally there’s Betty, Laura’s devoted maid. Could she be involved?

So far, so police procedural as McPherson works his way through the testimony and alibis of these four, tries to establish motive, sifts their recollections for truth and mis-truth – and smokes relentlessly in that way they do in 1940s murder mysteries.

But what pitches Preminger’s film into classic territory, however, is what happens to McPherson as he investigates: he becomes obsessed with Laura.

Can you fall in love with a dead woman you have never met? Yes, if you spend hours in a sitting room dominated by a huge portrait of her, read her diaries and letters, or stalk her boudoir and search through her drawers. Preminger’s film bulges with psycho-sexual weirdness (and in all the right places) with Andrews’s deadpan delivery and Tierney’s goody-goody persona only adding to the feeling of strangeness. On top of that, there’s a killer twist which pulls the rug out from everyone’s feet – characters included.

It’s based on a 1941 novel by former Communist and avowed anti-Nazi Vera Caspary, whose USP was works about female identity and what these days we call female empowerment.

Laura was nominated for five Oscars, winning for Best Cinematography, though oddly it wasn’t nominated for its music – yet today composer David Raksin is best remembered for his now-famous score. The main theme is now a jazz standard and has been recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra and Charlie Parker to Carly Simon and Robert Wyatt.