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Rosella Brain
"In a way, Laura is a somewhat offbeat selection. Director Otto Preminger's classy touch brings forth cinematography and art direction a bit less hardboiled, more glossy and romantic than one might usually expect in a noir."
Yes Joel I quite agree on this point and many others you make in this tremendous essay. I came upon Wonders in the Dark during the Noir countdown and I'm glad I did. I found many new films to see, and some others to revisit. I watched Night and the City for the first time following Maurizio's pick of it as #1. It is a grand film. Laura is pretty great too and I understand why you would pick it. I've also heard some others complain that it's not really much of a film noir at all, which I disagree with. If I've learned anything, noir doesn't pander. It insists on its own terms. You know it when you see it and I think Laura definitively qualifies. The Lydecker character is the type of character that makes the world of Noir tick- the obsessive, morally hypocritical and manipulative type that must have his way at all cost. Brilliant stuff. I also get what you mean about the ending. I always seem to forget exactly how it's going to end!
Thanks Jon! I still haven't seen Night and the City, or a lot of the other films on Maurizio's list. I have a Netflix queue devoted to Wonders countdowns but I'm still on Allan's lists I always divert myself back to the "random" queue and let that one molder. Curses of a short attention span.
I can see why many question Laura's noir pedigree; watching it last night I was surprised by the extent to which it lingers on the edge of something else - melodrama perhaps - but than noir was never a specific codified genre. Like you say, you know it when you see it. Anyway if it was noir enough for the Roca, it's noir enough for me.
Though Laura wouldn't rank as my No. 1 film noir, it sure ranks among my favourites. The theme of an investigator getting obsessed by/falling in love with a presumably dead lady's photograph & supposed persona was as arresting as it was disturbing. And yes, your mention of the terrific Noir countdown reminded me of the great times I had in following it, in the same way that I'd enjoyed Dave Goodfella's earlier noir countdown. Great stuff Joel!
Laura is a great film to nominate as #1 noir. Your piece also does the Preminger movie justice. The genre was never formulated by Hollywood with a clear attempt to be encoded like the western or horror film. Since it has only become a cinematic term after the fact, each individual feature has its own levels of idiosyncrasies. Variance between pictures is natural in this shadowy world and Laura while falling short in some departments is 100% noir to these eyes. It is also a great film that rewards multiple viewings. As worthy a selection as Night And The City or The Third Man. Great job with this essay Joel....M. Roca
Thanks Maurizio. I look forward to covering The Third Man soon too. I recently ripped the Karas music off the opening titles and have been listening to it again and again on my iPod. Speaking of noir idiosyncracies, that soundtrack surely is one but damn if it doesn't work.
A very good review. MovieMan, of a film that is one of my favourite noirs too.
It was the atmosphere that got me too, and the fact that the characters have more about them than in your common-or-garden film of the genre. Atmosphere, for me, often seems the most important part of a film; what is in the air.
I was never convinced by McPherson's love for Laura but that's probably because it's hard to imagine such a thing happening.
Nice of you to mention my review of Fire Walk With Me. Thanks. The painting of Laura is very much like Laura Palmer's high school photo (or maybe even like the bits and pieces of Rebecca left in Hitchcock's film.
Great point, Stephen - the more I think about/watch/read about these two movies/TV shows, the more I realize they are connected. Lynch has talked about not really watching many movies, but clearly the ones he has watched left an impact!
I agree that McPherson's initial falling in love doesn't have too much time to develop, but it works for me simply because Gene Tierney is so lovely in the flashbacks and portraits that we can see how it could happen, even if it's rather quick for him and his characters doesn't seem the type. It's a bit of a cheat, but works I think.
As you might expect, on JustWatch, you can add movies and TV shows to a Watchlist. Even better, you can filter your Watchlist to show only movies, only TV shows, or only content available from specific streaming services. For example, you could filter the list to show only movies available on Hulu.
Nov 2023 Update
JustWatch has introduced custom lists as a new feature. As a bonus, you can import your IMDb lists (provided they are set to public). Unfortunately, JustWatch limits free users to just 2 custom lists. To create more than that, you have to subscribe to the Pro version.
I heavily rely on Rotten Tomatoes to decide which movies to add to my watch queue. The critical consensus about a movie is more important to me than box office performance (popularity), genre, or the cast.
For TV shows, I used to rely on MetaCritic to get the critical consensus on TV series, but now I turn more often to Rotten Tomatoes, which added television to its service sometime in the past few years.
At this point, I would be happy to simplify my setup down to two apps, one for movies and one for TV. My ideal movie organizer would be a mashup of IMDb and JustWatch whereas my ideal TV organizer would combine the features of EpisodeCalendar with JustWatch.
To take it a step further I also want:
* Create lists of actors, directors, etc.
* Receive notifications when any film that includes one of the actors/directors from my list becomes available on one of my specified streaming services.
Short of that, are you aware of any (free) service that will notify me when one of my favorite actors is part of a new movie? Discovering new movies that include my favorite actors is half the battle.
Trakt.tv is perfect. It has elements of all of them. It has custom lists, just watch built-in, rotten tomatoes, and IMDb scores, comments, you can track episodes and even automatically, and it has a personalised calendar. I pay for the VIP membership and it has a Spotify-style year-in-review and all-time stats that I Love and filters to find exactly what your looking for in your lists.
Thanks for the tip. I checked it out and realized that I already have an account and have tried it out before. I find the app way too cluttered and confusingly organized. Also, too much functionality is behind the VIP paywall.
Play Queues allow you to queue up videos and music for continuous playback and endless enjoyment. You can randomly shuffle music from an artist, album, or genre, or binge on a TV series or other videos. You can easily reorder, remove, or add more content to your queue.
If you did an implicit queue by playing the first track of that AWOLNATION album and then went ahead and recreated all the same Play Next and Add to Up Next actions as earlier, you would end up with this:
The main difference, as you see, is that when you added content using Add to Up Next, it was placed after your other customized queue content rather than at the end of the album. This is because tracks 2 through 6 on the album were only added implicitly because playback was initiated specifically from track 1 rather than playing the album itself.
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Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple languages.[6]
Launched on January 16, 2007, nearly a decade after Netflix, Inc. began its pioneering DVD-by-mail movie rental service, Netflix is the most-subscribed video on demand streaming media services, with over 277.7 million paid memberships in more than 190 countries as of July 2024.[5][7] By 2022, "Netflix Original" productions accounted for half of its library in the United States and the namesake company had ventured into other categories, such as video game publishing of mobile games through its flagship service. As of October 2023, Netflix is the 23rd most-visited website in the world, with 23.66% of its traffic coming from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom at 5.84% and Brazil at 5.64%.[8][9]
Initially, Netflix offered a per-rental model for each DVD but introduced a monthly subscription concept in September 1999.[20] The per-rental model was dropped by early 2000, allowing the company to focus on the business model of flat-fee unlimited rentals without due dates, late fees, shipping and handling fees, or per-title rental fees.[21] In September 2000, during the dot-com bubble, while Netflix was suffering losses, Hastings and Randolph offered to sell the company to Blockbuster for $50 million. John Antioco, CEO of Blockbuster, thought the offer was a joke and declined, saying, "The dot-com hysteria is completely overblown."[22][23] While Netflix experienced fast growth in early 2001, the continued effects of the dot-com bubble collapse and the September 11 attacks caused the company to hold off plans for its initial public offering (IPO) and to lay off one-third of its 120 employees.[24]
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