Film screening - Laura

The Screen @ RADA, Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre, Malet Street, London
Film screening - Laura image
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This event ended on Saturday 12th of May 2012
Admission
£7
Location

The Screen @ RADA, Jerwood Vanbrugh Theatre, Malet Street, London

Nearest Tube/Rail Stations
Goodge Street 0.18 miles

Laura
Directed by Otto Preminger

Winner of the 1944 Oscar for Cinematography, Laura is an excellent example of classic movie making. Otto Preminger's masterpiece is a story of erotic obsession, jealousy, deceit and deadly betrayal, now newly and beautifully restored.

The narrator welcoming us into the pleasingly perverse upper-crust New York of the film is Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), a columnist who writes 'with a goose quill dipped in venom', first encountered at work in his bath by Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), the detective investigating the recent murder of beautiful advertising executive Laura (Gene Tierney). But Waldo's not the sole suspect; there's Laura's fiancé Shelby (Vincent Price), and Shelby's somewhat older lover Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson)... And can McPherson's judgement really be trusted anyway, given that he too appears to have fallen for the dead woman he's hearing about?

A brilliantly witty, tortuous script (including, very memorably, Lydecker's mordantly egotistical commentary) and Preminger's cool, sharp-sighted direction ensure that the film succeeds gloriously as both social satire and taut suspense. One of the subtlest, most sophisticated and most invigoratingly acerbic Hollywood crime movies ever made.

Running time 88 mins. Rated U.

Tags: Around Town

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