Laura

As I watched McPherson slink back into Laura’s floral stuffed chair, alcohol in hand, I felt uncomfortable as I waited for the camera to do something; it remains motionless as McPherson drinks then looks over his shoulder at Laura’s portrait. In this shot, Laura takes up more space in the frame than McPherson. Falling in love with the painted portrait of Laura seemed perverse, calling into question the intentions of McPherson in solving Laura’s murder case.

After considering Nick Schager’s perspective in his movie review of Laura, the character of McPherson, falling in love with the presumably dead Laura’s picture, is a literal manifestation of the type of obsession the three men have for Laura. Lydecker’s image of Laura as socialite oozing with sophistication makes it unbearable for him to see her with anyone lacking such refinement. Meanwhile, Carpenter imagines Laura as a “gorgeous, expensive bauble to wear on his cheap, philandering arm”. McPherson has literally fallen in love with an image but also the idea of Laura as a person of great manners, politeness and scruples, formed through the accounts of others who knew her. None of them really love Laura, they love the idea of what she can be to them, a malleable material responsive to the roles the men wish to assign. She is a femme fatal not by choice, but because of the men who desingn her to be attractive to them, leading to obsession. Lydecker, Carpenter, and McPherson all think they know who Laura is, but they all have a constructed idea of Laura based on how they have made her fit into their lives, and to see Laura in any other way than how they imagine her would make them question their own grasp on reality.

The way the camera treats Laura reminds us that she is only an idea, a concept of love, companionship, femininity, beauty, that the men are obsessed with having and controlling. Her entrance into the movie after being pronounced murdered is very anticlimactic. In the shot with Laura next to the fireplace, Laura and her portrait take up about equal height in the frame, yet the frilly lap next to McPherson is taller and wider than her in the shot. There aren’t any dramatic close-ups of her that would make us concerned with her reactions to her own murder. Scale in this film places attention on objects such as the lamp, distancing us from Laura as a person.

Her dreamy angelic lighting makes Laura seem translucent next to the men who have strong inky black shadows. The men’s shadows seem to compete with each other. There’s a shot in Laura’s apartment when McPherson is asking Carpenter about the concert he attended. Back to Carpenter, McPherson’s shadow is very dark, spilling onto Carpenter who stands behind him. Leydecker comes to stand behind Carpenter, and the three men are in perfect a diagonal line; their shadows overlap each other’s bodies and Leydecker’s, the most opaque is sprawled behind him on the apartment walls, difficult to discern. It is as though their shadows are trying to prove who has the greatest presence.

The only time I remember Laura’s character ever having a very dark shadow in the film is in the scene at the party when she is on the porch smoking with Carpenter. Lifting the cigarette to her lips, the shadow of her arm and hand goes directly to her neck, as if she is choking herself. (Roughly 8 minutes 13 seconds into the clip___http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLfqnE3VvAw&feature=related) This is also strange when considering her portrait and her pose that is hard to discern exactly but appears as if one hand is up to her neck. All of these can be reminders that Laura is, as said by Schager, “just a blank slate to be written on by others.” Her lack of shadow shows that her character doesn’t have the presence that other characters have, she doesn’t have the mass, the importance as a person.