Laura Investigations in Classic Hollywood

Laura Investigations in Classic Hollywood focuses on Laura, the beloved, award-winning 1944 classic Hollywood detective drama, fondly remembered by audiences and critics alike for its noir elements, enchanting portrait, engaging performances, and romantic musical score. This book shows there are other ways to think about Laura by paying more attention to the film’s details than is required or expected. At once an exemplar of classic Hollywood’s finest achievements, Laura is also a film whose strangeness and mystery hint at something more. Laura Investigations in Classic Hollywood argues that we can shed light on this fascinating movie by thinking like filmmakers ourselves. Such an investigation requires a new method, a practical method, which we introduce and demonstrate, closely analyzing Laura’s images and sounds. We use details and moments to analyze scenes, imagine alternate filmmaking possibilities, ask unexpected questions, and speculate about events happening off-screen, both in the fictional world and in the real world of the filmmakers and viewers. Each line of inquiry results in transforming a well-known, award-winning film into a series of glimpses at a rather unknown film, one that we fall further in love with as we explore its mysteries. By the book’s end, we realize our investigation of Laura has uncovered the hidden complexities we overlook while watching any movie.