Colin Harker, author of THE FEAST OF THE INNOCENTS and THORNS, joins us for an early dip into Spooky Season with the 1944 adaptation of Vera Caspary’s LAURA, directed by Otto Preminger. Starring the incomparable Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Judith Anderson, and Clifton Webb, the supernatural story of a police officer falling in love with a murdered woman is only a quarter of the story. At best.
Find Colin online:
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lordsteerpike.bsky.social
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/colinharkerauthor/
Books: https://a.co/d/066IR5sO
Chapters
- 00:00 Exploring the Genre Blend
- 10:08 The Influence of Classic Literature
- 19:57 Character Dynamics and Psychological Themes
- 28:59 Exploring Sexuality and Power Dynamics
- 30:01 Gender, Sexuality, and Vulnerability
- 50:54 The Haunting and Supernatural Elements of the Film
- 57:41 Exploring Gothic Elements in Film Noir
- 01:00:05 The Relationship Between Genre and Literary Fiction
- 01:11:21 The Dark Coming of Age in Laura
- 01:20:00 Realistic Handling of Romance in Laura
Transcript:
Emily Edwards (she/her) (00:00.216)
Kidoki, greetings, gumshoes, and welcome to another episode of Silver Screen Sleuths. My name is Emily Edwards, and I am a mystery author who talks to other authors, usually mystery, but we have a slight surprise for you today, about mystery movies and television shows. With me today is the author, Colin Harker. How the hell are you?
Colin Harker (00:20.365)
I’m doing well, thank you. And just like super excited to be talking about one of my all time favorite movies.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (00:26.122)
It’s so good. I’m so happy you suggested it. As soon as you were like, well, let’s think about doing Laura. I was like, nope, no other options. That is that is the correct answer.
Colin Harker (00:35.727)
Yeah, I was I was so like, I I was a little hesitant to bring it up just because there is a detective you know, a gumshoe in it. Like the the it has a lot of the hallmarks of like classic murder mystery, but in a lot of ways it’s really more of a gothic melodrama sla crossed with film noir and it’s just a really weird genre hybrid.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (00:55.434)
It really is. They threw everything that they could think of into a blender and out came I would argue like an absolutely perfect movie.
Colin Harker (01:03.471)
Yes. absolutely. I consider this on the same level as classics like the Maltese Falcon, just in terms of the casting is perfection. The script is just brilliant with the wit and like the crazy plot twist.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:16.642)
The crazy twist, but I’m really excited that you brought up Laura too, because you are predominantly a horror writer. And I want you to talk a little bit about your book and what ye what kind of crossovers you find between the horror and the mystery genre.
Colin Harker (01:32.974)
Yeah, so I have written a crazy gothic novel, The Feast of the Innocent, set in 17th century Scotland. And, you know, I’m really drawn to stories that kind of embrace that old school kind of gothic melodrama vibe. So, you know, stories within stories, characters just sitting and kind of narrating these crazy incidents in their past, ways to kind of build atmosphere through that kind of slow burn.
And you know, very character-driven kind of psychological horror plots with that kind of supernatural overtone. So, you know, mysteries are interesting to me because they often don’t have the supernatural elements of the gothic. but they do have they they they do have that kind of, you know, character-driven psychology. I mean, I’m thinking about old school, really old school 18th-century gothic novels like Anne Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho, which a lot of
Emily Edwards (she/her) (02:29.569)
Yes.
Colin Harker (02:30.597)
Yeah, I mean a lot of later murder mystery writers still draw from that, you know, kind of the wait, you know, is there something supernatural going on? no, it’s like this really crazy elaborate plot, you know, being orchestrated by, you know, sort of a Moriarty-esque villain. you see that in, you know, Victorian gothic melodramas like Wilkie Collins as well. And and there is, in my opinion, there always has been a kind of link.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (02:50.528)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (02:55.973)
between horror and mystery in terms of the atmospherics, in terms of the really strong stress on character psychology. I mean in my opinion, Agatha Christie’s and Then There were None is a straight up slasher plot. it it terrified me when I was a kid.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (03:08.229)
Totally, totally is. Yeah. Like, you know, that sort of like lurking in the dark, Jason Voorhees, I can’t figure out what’s happening, I’m the only one left, and yet I feel still something like lurking over my shoulder. That is a straight up slasher movie. You’re totally right.
Colin Harker (03:22.373)
Yeah. And I mean, I you know, Agatha Christie, I mean, I know I know she’s sort not the focus of this, but I feel like she’s just a great example of that crossover because she has such an understanding of character psychology and really is not afraid to delve into those darker moments. I mean, I’m thinking about her plots like Crooked House, where the twist of who the murderer is is just really shocking and frightening. And she wasn’t afraid to kind of straddle both, you know, those kind of
Emily Edwards (she/her) (03:43.382)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (03:51.558)
Gothic atmospherics and and psychological twists while grounding it in the classic structure of a murder mystery, you know, post-Sherlock Holmes type murder mystery. So yeah, I feel like Lara in the same way does a great job kind of taking tropes from Victorian gothic melodrama in particular, I think, and and blending them with that new kind of 1940s era, sort of hard-edged.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (04:18.783)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (04:18.811)
film noir and and it’s just so much fun to see because it works so seamlessly.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (04:24.819)
It does, you know. I’m so glad you brought that up because you know, a lot of what this reminds me of is how much Conan Doyle was anti-spiritualist. Like his whole reason to make Sherlock Holmes so logical and so bounded in science and things like that was because Conan Doyle’s writing in the era of spiritualism when people would hold seances and try to, you know, contact their deceased relatives.
in order to have, you know, that emotional closure. And he was like, that is all bullshit. I am a doctor. Like you’re all suffering from like gas lamp poisoning, you know, because you all have gas lamps running through your houses. And you know, it’s just like you are all psychotic. That is crazy. And then you have Agatha Christie, who really worked very well with that sort of, we don’t have a
All everybody I know is shell-shocked because she didn’t have a term for PTSD yet. And they’re experiencing things that no one’s ever experienced before. And I really do feel like Laura is that wonderful combination of something is lurking, something is pulling at my emotions that I don’t understand because you’re a 1940s man who’s been shot in the leg and he’s just like, I can’t.
you know, acknowledge actual feelings. So there has to be this specter, this miasma of something supernatural sort of happening with his emotions. And it all just comes down to the undeniable like sexual wonder of this Laura woman that not even a gay man can stop like, you know, obsessing over.
Colin Harker (05:54.224)
Right. Exactly. I mean, and and the crazy thing is and and it the thing is it totally works because Gene Tierney, I you know, I I every time I watch the movie, I’m like, only she could have pulled off the kind of character that she was being asked to play there. Because if you think about it, Lara is an enigma even at the end of the film. Like we know she’s a very driven career woman. She’s very independent and strong willed. but she has this very vulnerable
empathic side to her, which really draws people as well. And, you know, I was thinking because we’re not given much on her in the film, much of her interiority, there is that danger that she could come off as kind of smarmy because, you know, those really are her two sides, is, you know, very strong-willed career woman and, you know, very vulnerable, empathic woman who who just draws these men in because of that vulnerability. And
Emily Edwards (she/her) (06:36.065)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (06:51.297)
I think Gene Tierney’s genius is the fact that she has this ability to project interiority through her micro expressions. There is just something that’s just so deeply spiritual, if if that doesn’t sound too corny about her beauty and and just the strength of the character that she projects. So, you know, when I’m watching it, I’m like, absolutely. I completely buy that everyone who crosses this woman’s path is obsessed with her because she has that.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (07:04.993)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (07:20.847)
you know, kind of charisma. And it really is a special kind of charisma that she has to project there. Because, you know, I love Rita Hayworth. I love so many of those other classic era actresses. I really think only Tyranny could have pulled that weird combination of strength and vulnerability. it was
Emily Edwards (she/her) (07:35.999)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (07:39.456)
Yeah, no, you’re so right. I’m sorry to talk over you. That was very rude of me. But I I do think you’re right because like I’m going through my head of other actresses of the era that I absolutely love. And you’re right, Rita Hayworth, it would have been too sexual, would have been too sort of like consumptive, you know, like she’s a man-eater. if you had Barbara Stanwick in the role, it would be too conniving, she’d be too smart, she would be too you know, wicked almost at it.
Colin Harker (07:43.973)
Yeah, no I don’t know.
Colin Harker (07:58.14)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (08:07.881)
And but Gene Tierney, she has this unbelievable ability to play girlish and naive without it being predatory that all these men want to be a part of her life, or at least very much, you know, Dana Andrews wanting to be part of her life. You know, certainly you get the pre almost predatory nature from Wally Leidecker, who is played amazingly by Clifton Webb. And then you have Vincent Price.
Colin Harker (08:33.147)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (08:37.515)
Who is also just absolutely impeccable in this movie, as this like louch man about town Shelby Carpenter. And it’s it is also just unbelievably interesting to me that two of the men that are trying to consume Gene Tierney’s character of Laura are men that we know to be gay or bisexual. Now, like, you know.
Colin Harker (08:42.8)
Yes.
Any
Colin Harker (09:01.112)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (09:01.665)
Decades afterwards. And I thought that was like, and there was no secret certainly about Clifton Webb in the 1940s. And Vincent Price, most people were probably aware then as well that you know he had different sexual proclivities than Dana Andrews. And I just thought that’s a really interesting sort of spin to put onto the those two characters.
Colin Harker (09:08.155)
Uh-huh.
Colin Harker (09:22.193)
It is. It is. And yeah, I that is such an interesting point. And that was something I was thinking of yesterday while I was watching. The relationship between Lara and Waldo is so fascinating because the the you know, sexual element of it isn’t it doesn’t have that kind of gosh, I I’m I’m at a loss for words. There there’s a way in which it’s just purely cerebral. It’s
Emily Edwards (she/her) (09:50.143)
Yes,
Colin Harker (09:50.926)
I I mean it kind of gets to, you know, what I was I was mentioning with Gene Tierney’s beauty, the way that she presents her charisma and Lara as having that sort of spiritual, empathic component. There’s there’s a way in which what’s so fascinating about the dynamic between her and Waldo is it’s this meeting of minds. Like you truly get the sense that he is drawn to her because of her mind, because of just this quick wittedness, this independence.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (10:08.245)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (10:14.093)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (10:17.989)
this way that she had the gumption to go up to him and be like, You’re an asshole. And that really Yeah, it and that really drew him. And I I really think that that is such an interesting twist. That it’s not kind of the you know, typical, you know, he’s looking for sexual favors, like he’s this predatory man who’s taking advantage of her after giving her, you know, a hand in her career. It’s it’s different. Like it is this way in which there’s this kind of almost intellectual voraciousness. Like he truly believes
Emily Edwards (she/her) (10:22.06)
Yeah, exactly.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (10:45.954)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (10:47.301)
that these other men who she’s drawn to, like Shelby and, you know, the inspector, are just not worthy of her. Like they are not her intellectual equals. Like, you know, he kind of mocks, you know, the earthiness of these romances.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (10:58.892)
The earthiness of that. I was like, I was like, that is such an interesting like code way of saying like he wants to have sex with you. Isn’t that dirty? Isn’t that disgusting? Isn’t that earthy? And you’re just like, he’s gorgeous. He’s Dana Andrews. He’s beautiful. Of course she wants to have sex with him. Like
Colin Harker (11:08.889)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (11:18.729)
Yeah. But he’s shocked. He’s like, you know, and the same with Shelby. It’s like, why would you want to be with this himbo? which which by the way, one of the things I love about the movie is just casting Vincent Price as a himbo is just so against type for the kind of characters he plays later and like the Corman yeah, Edgar Allan Poe movies that it’s just it’s so much fun to see. And he does a great job. Like it’s just it’s amazing.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (11:25.442)
Yes.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (11:36.567)
You know.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (11:42.595)
He does. I think a lot of people forget that Vincent Price was beautiful. You know what I mean? Because we know him for playing like these weirdos. You know, think of like the tingler where he’s like, you know, arguing with this giant earwig thing and he’s just playing with puppets and, you know, or like later on. Exactly. Or later on when he’s opposite Peter Laurie and they’re just these like absolutely cheap, horrible sets and these cheap, horrible like plastic velvet gowns and stuff like that. And there’s so
Colin Harker (11:52.207)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (11:57.638)
But I love that movie. Yeah.
Colin Harker (12:04.305)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (12:11.429)
Yeah. Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (12:12.578)
Dumb. You know, I love them. Don’t not get me wrong. Like I absolutely love those dumbass movies, but they’re dumbass movies sometimes. And in this, he’s just such a he’s such a good New York Playboy. And he’s like seducing two women at once. And he’s just the right age to get away with seducing a woman older than him and much younger than him. And I to to that point as well, we have to bring up Judith Anderson as as Laura’s aunt.
Colin Harker (12:31.483)
Mm. right.
Colin Harker (12:38.458)
Yes.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (12:40.898)
Who is such a bitch and you hate her so much?
Colin Harker (12:45.017)
My god. I have been obsessed with Judith Anderson’s career ever since Rebecca because she is she is the Mrs. Danvers. Like I don’t care how many other versions of Rebecca there are, she she is the Mrs. Danvers. And yeah, she just nails that role and and and honestly, that that scene where, you know, she kinda corners Lara and is sort of like, you know, I’m completely capable of murder.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (12:54.38)
Yes.
Colin Harker (13:09.945)
So is Shelby. But you know, it’s cool. I just want you to know that, you know, we’re capable of murder. And it’s just like it’s just such a great kind of threat while feeling like completely, you know, appropriate to this like weird sort of, you know, party drawing room setting. ’cause, you know, she’s just impeccably polite the whole time she’s basically threatening her niece.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (13:29.762)
And she’s putting on lipstick the entire time too, which is so interesting because it’s again a very sex a coded sexual thing where she’s just like, You don’t think that because I’m a woman of my age, that I am a consumptive person, that I will eat things alive, that I will take things for myself, but I’m putting on lipstick in order to go seduce your ex fiance who I’ve been sleeping with this entire time, and don’t mess with me. And Laura is just kind of like,
Colin Harker (13:48.773)
No.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (13:56.823)
I cannot wait to be rid of all of you freaks and weirdos because she’s like, How did I collect you guys?
Colin Harker (14:03.897)
It’s a funny moment. It’s it’s an interesting moment narrative beat because that threat comes right after Lara has decided she’s kinda done with Shelby because he’s all but said, you know, I think you, you know, murdered what’s her name? Diane, I forget. Yeah, the model. Yeah, yeah. So so at that point Lara’s already done with him and then the threat comes. So it’s just kind of interesting because it just cements, you know, the the her circle.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (14:16.852)
Mm-hmm. Diane Redfern or something like that? Yeah.
Colin Harker (14:31.825)
you know, is just made up of these really bright, really, you know, charismatic but just utterly, you know, terrifying people who are just, you know, have this ruthlessness that Laura herself doesn’t have.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (14:41.058)
It’s true.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (14:44.994)
But I’m so glad you brought up that Judith Anderson was in Rebecca because the parallels between Laura and Rebecca are quite obvious, but also just like really deftly done.
Colin Harker (14:57.515)
Yeah, I completely agree. so it’s interesting you bring that up because it kind of goes back to when I was a kid. So I just just sort of, you know, backdrop. I was a really weird kid. Like I loved reading like these crazy, like nerdy film noir books, you know, like the did deep dives into like just the lighting and the atmosphere and the characters. Yeah, and like so I actually came across Lara through one of these books. They were like describing the plot.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (15:10.19)
Ha ha ha.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (15:19.106)
That’s awesome.
Colin Harker (15:26.915)
And I think one of these books had this still of, you know, Dana Andrew’s character as he’s, you know, sitting in the armchair in Lara’s apartment and that, you know, giant portrait of her is up there. And, you know, he’s he’s just kind of gonna, you know, like looking at it and and you know, it’s this understanding at that point in the narrative he believes she’s dead. And, you know, it was just so interesting when I was reading the plot, you know, because the the books kind of give away the plot. Like they’re sort of, yeah, there’s this twist, she’s actually alive, she comes in.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (15:46.819)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (15:56.946)
And I think what really drew me to the movie was this idea of kind of him falling in love with this portrait of this dead beautiful woman because there was just something so gothic about it. And, you know, it’s not handled in a creepy way. If this was a Hitchcock movie, like, you know, it would it would be much more disturbing. It’s it’s Yeah, exactly. Yeah, instead of just going through her perfume, you would be like, Yeah, no, I’m just
Emily Edwards (she/her) (16:10.328)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (16:17.707)
Yeah, he’d be sleeping in her bed, kinda like, you know.
Colin Harker (16:25.633)
I’m going full Jimmy Stewart vertigo here. But you know, but but yeah, that doesn’t happen. It’s interesting actually, the way it’s played is much more kind of romantic. And and ’cause ’cause again, you know, part of why he’s fallen in love with her isn’t just the portrait of her and you know, Waldo kind of hyping her in the conversation. It’s also he’s gone through her diary, he’s gone through her letters, he understands her interiority.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (16:27.993)
Seriously.
Colin Harker (16:51.267)
And there’s something about who she is, like that spirit that really draws her. again, kind of like Waldo, except you with Dana Andrews’ character, there’s kind of a physicality to that attraction as well. but yeah, that entire sort of motif of falling in love with this charismatic dead woman just I was like, I have to see this movie because it did not sound like the other film noirs.
I was reading about the closest I could think of was the third man, weirdly enough. Because it had because like because like Lara, the third man has that like weird, you thought this person was dead. Well, they’re actually, you know, still alive.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (17:21.323)
Yeah Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (17:28.813)
Yeah. Y no, that’s a really good point because like and also Dina Andrews and Joseph Cotton are like very similar in type to me. Like if I think of like two actors who play very similar characters, like they’re very similar to me. Cause they’re not like leading men, leading men, if that makes sense. They’re they’re good actors, they’re handsome, but they’re not like movie star guys.
Colin Harker (17:36.815)
They are next.
Colin Harker (17:51.804)
Yeah. No, that’s true. There’s this kind of I think what really kind of sort of bridges I I think what they have in is similar is that vulnerability. Like there are just these you know, they have this kind of tough exterior a lot of the time. especially Dana Andrews. Like his character is just sort of aggressively like, you know, a day a dame got a fox fur out of me, you know, like it it sounds very practiced. Like he’s like, No, I do not have any vulnerable side, which which of course, you know, is obviously not
Emily Edwards (she/her) (18:02.487)
Mm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (18:12.558)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (18:19.035)
True. But but you know, again, like Tierney, he is a master of these micro expressions, and you just see these kind of moments of kind of vulnerability and hurt, you know, cross his face from time to time, you know, when he thinks Lara isn’t who he thought she was. And I think that yeah, there’s there’s a way in which what the movies do is they they take this character who seems like, you know, the typical kind of hard boiled noir.
hero and they throw him into this gothic situation. you know, where he’s falling in love with this portrait of a dead beautiful woman, and he’s kind of confronted with this sort of female interiority that he didn’t really realize existed. Like he he’s very dismissive. And and I think he just does such a great job in his performance as just kind of a fish out of water. Like he is he’s not, you know,
Emily Edwards (she/her) (19:02.296)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (19:12.593)
in in this world of, you know, I’m thinking of like more typical film noirs the big combo or something like that. Or the asphalt jungle. Like he he he would be more at home in those worlds. This world of kind of this gothic femininity is disorienting to him. And I think, you know, to go back to Rebecca, there is this similar way in which, you know, the world of
Emily Edwards (she/her) (19:17.774)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Colin Harker (19:36.533)
like look like Rebecca is dead, but she completely dominates. Like she dominates the entire story. And there’s something so interesting about a plot like that where a character is not there, but is there.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (19:39.457)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (19:47.598)
Yeah. No, I you know, you make an excellent point about that because you know, one of the things that Wally keeps using as a reason for why Laura should keep her distance from McPherson is like Laura, he keeps calling women dames. Like you don’t understand. Like, look at how earthy and disgusting and down he is. Without Wally understanding that calling women dames is trying to keep them at arm’s length. You know, it’s it’s I won’t.
Colin Harker (19:57.553)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (20:14.413)
Be vulnerable if I think all women are just trying to get a fox fur out of me. Like it’s a really good way for him to sort of be closed off and stay closed off. And you know, one of the things that again also comes up of Wally being so mad at McPherson because he’s got a limp and he got that limp in the line of duty. And obviously Wally has never been in any kind of duty to anybody ever at any point in his life.
Colin Harker (20:18.98)
Mm.
Colin Harker (20:40.891)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (20:41.953)
And he’s just like, look at how, you know, but McPherson also has that thing where he’s just like, he’s got PS PTSD, but it’s not from the war. It’s from like the daily war that he’s living in. And that’s so noir, that’s so like hard boiled, where it’s like, I’m always up against it. And it’s just like, buddy.
Colin Harker (20:53.553)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (20:58.897)
it’s so true though. Yeah, it you know, it’s interesting, you know, just just like listening to you talk about his character kind of made me realize that s you know, Waldo and McPherson have a really similar trajectory with Lara in the sense that Lara completely breaks down, Waldo’s kind of closed off, you know, I’m an asshole, you know, get away from me. I’m eat I’m eating my lunch is more important than your career, that kind of thing.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (21:24.174)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (21:28.449)
Lunch alone, which is like the best detail. He’s surrounded by people and he’s eating this little two-top by himself.
Colin Harker (21:28.627)
And
Colin Harker (21:34.296)
Yeah. Right. I know, which is so sad. And Lara calls that out. Like she’s like, I really feel sorry for you. You’re a very lonely man. And she completely, you know, just like takes a catapult to his defenses. And and he falls for that kind of vulnerability and empathy. And in the same way, McPherson has this similar kind of wall around him. And again, you know, just being confronted with
who she is, even as a dead person, she completely, you know, batters that down. And that is just so interesting.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (22:08.129)
One of the things that the movie doesn’t do as well as the book, even though I’m going to say that the movie is flawless and I absolutely love it. But one of the things that it doesn’t do as well as the book is you know, we start out in the movie where the narration is coming from Waldo Leidecker, where he’s just like, This is how I met Laura. This is how Laura came into my life. You know, he’s in the bathtub typing, and it’s so indulgent and so.
Colin Harker (22:14.81)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (22:34.905)
Creepily sexual and stuff like that, but asexual too, because it’s very bizarre. But in the in the book, you also get narration from McPherson, which isn’t as prevalent in the movie. And a lot of it is McPherson telling you what’s in Laura’s diary. Like he goes through all the details of what’s in her diary, what is really like tugging at his heartstrings, how he feels he knows her.
But other scenes that they cut out from the book that aren’t in the movie are McPherson and Lidecker go to dinner together at a restaurant that Lidecker goes to with Laura all the time. It’s this little hole-in-the-wall Italian place, obviously like mob connected. And it’s just like this very odd scenery where they’re like sitting underneath like a bower, like, you know, a flower arch in this like
Italian woman’s backyard, and there’s lights everywhere, and that they’re this little two-top, and it’s very romantic and it’s very like date-coded. And McPherson’s just like, give me information. And Lidecker’s like, why don’t we talk about it a little bit? And he’s so like conniving, but also clearly hitting on this man that he hates with a red-hot passion. And it’s just really interesting because you don’t get quite
Colin Harker (23:38.737)
Yeah.
Ha
Colin Harker (23:49.041)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (23:57.544)
that level of like conniving or controlling from from Waldo during the movie. Like he’s obviously very, very controlling, but he he kind of doesn’t get his hooks into McPherson in the way that he does in the book. The book is really, really fascinating in that way.
Colin Harker (24:02.52)
Please.
Colin Harker (24:06.383)
Yeah. Yeah.
Colin Harker (24:16.293)
Yeah, yeah. that is really inter that’s a scene Hitchcock would never have deleted. that is so interesting. I you know, I haven’t read the book. I really, really want to. One thing I thought was interesting when I was reading up on the book was that the author, I think her name I I’m
Emily Edwards (she/her) (24:20.899)
Yeah, you’re right.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (24:28.164)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (24:40.631)
Vera Caspery. Yeah.
Colin Harker (24:41.987)
Okay, okay, yeah. I was I was scared to say it because I was like, I don’t know how to say that last name. yeah, I I read that apparently she kind of was inspired by Wilkie Collins sort of Moriarty-esque Victorian Gothic villain Count Fosco when she wrote Waldo Leidecker. Yeah, which which kind of speaks to what you were saying about how in the book he is more conniving, like he
Emily Edwards (she/her) (24:58.753)
that makes sense. Yeah.
Colin Harker (25:08.665)
He he he’s a control freak just like he is in the movie, but he seems to be a little bit more calculating, which definitely sounds more Count Fosco-esque. ‘Cause you Count Count Fosco is sort of like a proto-moriarty. Like he, you know, he he’s he’s a puppet master. He’s pulling the strings as he’s trying to I believe, rob an heiress of her fortune. and yeah, Waldo is a control freak, but all of his power in the movie comes from his eloquence.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (25:10.724)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (25:14.177)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (25:20.996)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (25:28.888)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (25:36.343)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (25:36.798)
He’s not really a puppet master, except insofar as, you know, any great journalist would be a puppet master.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (25:42.796)
Yeah. No, and I love the fact that you brought up the fact that he is a writer and an air quote journalist because he I love the bits where where McPherson calls him out and he’s just like, That’s not the crime that happened. That w you’re you’re you’re making up details to a crime and Waldo’s just kind of like, Yeah, but it sells better and it sounds better and it makes a better story, so why wouldn’t I make up these details? And you’re just like, you’re evil, evil, you’re so awful.
Colin Harker (26:02.875)
Yeah. Yeah.
Colin Harker (26:09.829)
Yeah, I know. That yeah, it’s interesting. One thing, I don’t know if the book ever touches on this, but one thing that I always thought was really interesting in the movie is Lara is the one who approaches Waldo first. And that is always so interesting to me because it does make me wonder what exactly drew her to him. I know that there’s kind of that moment where she’s sort of shocked that he is as cold.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (26:23.533)
Mm-hmm.
Colin Harker (26:36.889)
as he is at the beginning to her because she’s sort of like, you know, you write beautiful things about people, like, you know, how can you be, you know, this kind of person in reality? which kind of leads me to believe that he actually at times writes, you know, very sentimental columns, you know, very sort of, I guess, you know, human centered stories. but it is just really
Emily Edwards (she/her) (26:37.561)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (26:57.837)
really fascinating because I mean I think there’s this really funny line you know that McPherson gives where he’s like, you for a remarkably intelligent woman, you have a talent for surrounding yourself with dopes. It’s like it’s kind of true. I mean it’s like she know she has she has this like empathy and intelligence and and you know strong will. but yeah, the people around her are just so strange. You know, McPherson included he’s a really strange person too.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (27:07.459)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (27:22.561)
Yeah, he’s he really is like you know, him sitting there and getting pass out drunk in this woman’s armchair staring at a picture of her hero just like that is creepy. Like you’re you are right that that Hitchcock would have made it 10 times creepier, but like it’s still definitely creepy. And she walks in and she doesn’t immediately like shriek and like wail on him. She’s just kind of like, What are you doing here? And it’s like
Girl, you should know better than to expect to see a strange man in your armchair. It’s super weird.
Colin Harker (27:52.696)
Right. Yeah, I mean I I agree. I mean I I think so that’s like one of my all time favorite scenes, not just in the movie, but just in film in general, because there is just something so at that point in the movie, unless you’ve, you know, ha have read spoilers, you don’t know that she’s alive. So you see him kind of going through the apartment, you know, he opens her perfume, you know, he he like looks at her clothes and everything. Like you can tell that he is really troubled and distraught.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (28:12.889)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (28:22.373)
By the fact that, you know, this woman who he is falling in love with is dead. And it’s just like a really weird, kind of disorienting experience for him to be reacting to any woman like this. And then he, you know, falls asleep. And that moment when she comes in, absolutely no, I I believe there’s absolutely no music playing. It’s just so shocking when she walks in. Cause you do not see that twist coming. And the way that he sort of, you know, wakes up beneath the
Emily Edwards (she/her) (28:43.223)
I don’t think there is, yeah.
Yeah.
Colin Harker (28:52.049)
Portrait and sees her is like something straight out of some strange, you know, fairy tale. I mean, it’s it almost kind of goes beyond the gothic to that sort of, you know, I sleeping beauty, you know, Charles Peral, you know, that kind of almost mythic sort of, you know, falling asleep and seeing like, you know, your love resurrected. And
Emily Edwards (she/her) (28:59.79)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (29:10.114)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (29:16.025)
It’s just such a beautiful moment, but but yeah, you know, tinged with this strangeness about it, like, you know, her reaction is is almost kind of dreamlike. You know, she’s not like, my God, who the hell are you? Like I’m calling 911. She’s sort of like, you know, who you know, like it just adds to the surreal nature of the
Emily Edwards (she/her) (29:26.06)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (29:33.986)
Yeah. No, and and I do have to say that one of the things that the book does that they obviously can’t do in a movie in 1944 is that a lot of the description of Diane Redfern and the things in Laura’s apartment are far more sexual than they can be on screen because it’s 1944. So, you know, they make reference to the fact that Diane was murdered while wearing Laura’s clothes, but one of the things
Colin Harker (29:41.818)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (30:01.421)
The details that’s in the book is that she is basically naked underneath a see-through sheer sort of like robe with the and negligee. And McPherson is really drawn to the fact that this air quotes good girl, Laura, would have sort of like maribou kitten heels and see-through lingerie. And he’s just kind of like, What other secrets can I find out about this girl who is absolutely gorgeous?
wealthier than I have ever dreamed of being wealthy. Like I don’t have to buy this girl Fox first. She has her own. And the fact that she’s, you know, had multiple boyfriends, is currently, you know, engaged to someone and has see-through lingerie. And so he’s just kind of got this like wonderful intrigue of like, this is a woman who is worldly enough for me.
But obviously they can’t show you. Like Diane Redfern, it’s gone into major details that poor Diane Redfern is found in a pool of blood in Laura’s foyer, like no face, but you could see everything else because she is in all of this like see-through, you know, sheer sexy, sexy stuff. And, you know, he’s just kind of like, she would answer the door and like nothing at all. And, you know, and he’s just kind of like, Woo-hoo, I love this woman. And you’re just kind of like,
Colin Harker (31:20.561)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (31:21.837)
get it man but also she was there with someone else dressed up as that and he does not care at all.
Colin Harker (31:28.835)
That is so funny. my god. I mean, again, like it it it’s so funny when you when you especially when you’re mentioning these elements in the book, I can’t not think of Hitchcock. You know, like I’m thinking about the moment in Rebecca where Mrs. Anvers is giving the second Mrs. DeWinter the tour of Rebecca’s bedroom. And, you know, she she goes through the lingerie and she’s like, you know, look, I can see my hand through it. And it’s just this wonderful sort of, you know, hit Hitchcock has to dodge the code.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (31:39.428)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (31:52.589)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (31:57.378)
but he does he manages to do it by you know having that sort of you know oblique way of sort of saying, Yeah, all this lingerie is like, you know, see-through. and yeah, they they they do they do dodge that. I I feel like they sort of try to compensate in the movie, you know, with him kind of going through her closet a little bit. But the I do think that the movie maybe changes her character a little bit. There there’s this sense in which
Emily Edwards (she/her) (31:57.476)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (32:05.665)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (32:24.707)
lot, trust me, like it’s not that far off from the book. Yeah.
Colin Harker (32:27.727)
It’s not that far. Okay, okay. Yeah, ’cause I ’cause it’s interesting, the way that you’re describing it, it almost kind of sounds like McPherson’s character is a little bit more perviant. in the sense that it’s kind of like the details he hones in on are are a little bit more sexualized.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (32:43.947)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It you know, it’s funny again, cause we were talking about how Dana Andrews is not necessarily known or doesn’t have the legacy for being like, you know, if this was a different guy walking, I’m thinking Clark Gable. Like if Clark Gable was the guy, you’d be you’d see him like touching people’s gowns and you’d be like, that man wants to have sex with her. Like, we get it. But Dana Andrews doesn’t have quite that legacy or that that aura about him. So
Colin Harker (33:08.241)
Right.
Colin Harker (33:13.232)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (33:13.771)
It’s slightly more just kind of like a sexual hard-boiled cop, you know, trying to do the things that he wants to do. But I think, you know, one of the things that I like to talk about on the show is that, you know, it of a lot of times for police narratives to not be sort of copaganda where like the cops are here and they’re going to fix everything. Is that the cop has to be kind of outside the norms of the police, you know, the policing apparatus. So
Colin Harker (33:32.568)
huh.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (33:42.57)
Like I know this is a weird movie to mention, but like in Witness, where Harrison Ford is like, I am a cop who is not allowed back at my precinct because those guys are gonna kill me. That’s really essential to a police sleuth kind of being more of a sleuth and less propaganda. And I think one of the things is is while McPherson has a lot of support from his like, you know, patrolmen and other
detectives while pursuing this. Like there’s always some poor schmuck standing outside in the rain for him. Like he doesn’t have to do that. But he realizes that what he’s doing on this case is weird as hell.
Colin Harker (34:13.658)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (34:18.925)
Like he doesn’t want anybody to know that he’s in love with Laura and that like if he could, you know, sleep in her bed and smell her perfume every night, he would be super happy about it. He doesn’t want anybody so he kind of puts himself at arm’s length again from the people who are supposed to be closest to him. And I think that’s one of the ways that he feels slightly more like outsider noari private investigator rather than like an apparatus of the city law enforcement.
Colin Harker (34:35.278)
Okay.
Colin Harker (34:48.345)
Yeah, n I yeah, that is really true. Also, some of the things that he does are things I don’t think most cops would do. Like I love the way that any time any suspect asks if they can follow him on his investigation, like I think Waldo does, Shelby does, he’s like, Okay, sure. Like he just has this whole entourage of suspects just following him while he’s teaming up with the other suspects to ask them and I’m like
I mean it’s it’s so funny. Like it really is. And and you know, this this this one of the things too that I think just sort of makes this movie special to me is it’s really funny. Like it it I mean like Cliff Yeah, like like Clifton Clifton Webb’s line deliveries are just hilarious. Like his takedowns, you know, the the cat fighting between him and Shelby. I mean
Emily Edwards (she/her) (35:15.907)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (35:23.115)
It is really funny. It’s super funny.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (35:38.248)
my god, yes. Him and Shelby. my god, it’s so funny. When like whenever Wally shows up to someone’s apartment and he’s just like, Ew, this tacky plays, and it’s like it’s like one, you know, step away from a Paul Lind kind of like, ooh, you know, like you’re just it’s just toned down just enough to get like the censors to approve it. And he’s so mean and it is so funny.
Colin Harker (35:52.517)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (36:03.543)
It really is. And I mean, you know, like I was saying, you know, Tierney does a great job of kind of making us buy that all these men gravitate to her. I feel like Clifton Webb does a great job of making us buy why Lara spends time with him. Because he’s funny. Like he he is a, you know, mean person. He’s a he’s a control freak. Like he’s got these really, you know, this dark side to him. But I think that, you know, Webb’s performance really does a great job of kind of
Emily Edwards (she/her) (36:17.71)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (36:31.085)
drawing out the humor of the character as well. Like we we we completely buy, you know, people would sit and read this guy’s columns every week because he’s hilarious. And a lot of the times, you know, the things he says about the other characters are kind of accurate. I mean, she’ll be is kind of a himbo. so yeah, I mean it’s it’s just it’s so great. But I I guess, you know, one of the things, you know, to speak to what you were saying about
Emily Edwards (she/her) (36:39.513)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (36:58.481)
How how these movies kind of avoid, you know, falling into the propaganda trap. Every character in the movie, in a weird way, does feel like an outsider. I mean, it’s like Lara is, you know, sort of made an outsider in the sense that she’s a very, you know, ambitious, career-driven woman who has the, you know, this vulnerable side as well. but it does kind of, you know, draw her apart from, you know, a society that is not really
Emily Edwards (she/her) (37:08.067)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (37:25.061)
you know, kind of used to career women yet. Like, you know, she’s she feels very modern in that sense. but you know, Waldo, Waldo is like this very isolated person. McPherson, you know, Shel Shelby, everyone keeps being like he’s the guy everyone is always gonna think did it. Like that’s just who he is. Like he’s sort of the born scapegoat. And it’s just very interesting how every character just seems very alone. and like, you know, kind of craving connection. And it’s like Lara is kind of like the lightning rod.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (37:41.913)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (37:49.485)
Mm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (37:55.16)
Yeah. No, I was thinking earlier while you were talking about like why would Laura, who’s a good person, be drawn to Wilde Leidecker. And part of me was thinking of like oftentimes when you don’t know who you are, you’re drawn to people who are extremely cruel to you because it kind of gives you an understanding of where you are in a pecking order. And so I was thinking, you know, it’s like Laura.
Colin Harker (37:55.195)
That just sort of draws them.
Colin Harker (38:13.744)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (38:22.273)
In the book, they make a little bit more detail that I think she comes from a relatively low class family and like moved to the city and is going to like make something of herself. And she’s very much like, you don’t want to say social climberish, like she wants to be something. She just doesn’t know what that thing is. And so, you know, in the movie, they make her a very sort of like smart, quick, like, you know, almost Rosalind Russell style cut style kind of like career woman. I’m gonna get things done.
But I think her being drawn to Waldo Leidecker a little bit, especially because he’s like, I made you who you are. And she’s just kind of like, You at least you made me something. You know what I mean? Because I didn’t know how to define what I was before. And like, if someone who defines your identity for you starts treating you like crap, like he does, you kind of just like, this is part of the identity. This is part of my life. This is part of how people are supposed to treat me. And like
Nobody mourns her except for her cleaning lady. And she’s just kind of like, if the only person who actually likes me or treats me with any kind of affection or kindness is someone who is, you know, sociologically beneath me, then I guess I’m supposed to be treated by crap by people who are better, you know, air quotes better than me. Like her shitty aunt is just awful to her. Her fiance, who is has nothing.
Is you know, she gives him a job and she gives him money and she gives him successes. Like she’s just like, buddy’s so handsome and my aunt likes him, so he must be good. And it’s just like, my god, everybody is terrible to you. And girl, just go date a cop and hang out with your cleaning lady. Like, it’s okay, you’ll be fine.
Colin Harker (40:02.033)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (40:06.779)
Yeah, that that is that is a really good point. yeah, I cause cause, you know, we we get a lot of Lara’s backstory through Waldo and that story about, you know, how they met and how, you know, she kind of climbed to the top of I think it’s a marketing firm she works for. but yeah, that that is a really good point. Th there is that kind of class element as well. You do get the vibe that she really did have to kind of, you know, scrape and struggle to get to where she is.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (40:22.702)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (40:36.077)
And she is not getting that kind of, you know, emotional affirmation that she’s giving from these, you know, sort of upper crust people like Waldo, like Shelby. And that she does have more of a connection to people like Bessie, like McPherson. And yeah, you know, I mean, I think the movie’s perfect. It would have been really interesting though to kind of see if they had chosen to kind of lean more into that kind of
Emily Edwards (she/her) (40:51.416)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (41:02.673)
Class consciousness, you know, like a movie like Pickup on South Street, like it it’s all over, something like that. and I think it would have been been really interesting. I I do think Tierney’s performance does such a great job of kind of showing that sort of coming of age element, though. I mean, when you think about the scenes where she’s first meeting Waldo with the little folder and everything, and she’s just so excited and bright eyed, like you know, she’s a different person in that scene from the
Emily Edwards (she/her) (41:06.573)
Yeah. Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (41:24.961)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (41:30.673)
person she is at the end of the movie. The person at the end of the movie, you know, the expressions, you know, what she says and does, there’s definitely a harder edge. Like you get the sense of that transition through time through Tierney’s performance. And it’s, I mean, it’s just absolutely brilliant how she manages to do that. Because again, she’s kind of having to compensate for the fact that Laura is the center of the movie, but also her interiority is never directly expressed to us. So
Tierney’s performance has to make up for that completely. Like that interiority has to be in everything she does externally. And she manages to do it. I mean, it’s just amazing.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (42:09.569)
I think the only one of the only times we ever get Laura alone in the entire movie is just before, spoiler alert for like a 100-year-old movie, is just before Waldo comes into her apartment to try to kill her at the end. That’s one of the only times we ever get Laura by herself. And all she’s doing is getting ready for bed. So she’s just combing her hair. She’s taking off her makeup. She’s like doing very outwardly focused things. It’s not like she’s reading a book.
Colin Harker (42:24.197)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (42:38.571)
It’s not like she’s, you know, like reading a magazine or making herself a snack. She’s doing things that are going to make her beautiful the next day. And it’s such an interesting thing to give her and to and that to be the thing that kind of Waldo walks in on. And he’s like, your most vulnerable is when you’re not prepared to show yourself to to someone who’s on the outside. And it’s just such a really, really interesting thing because.
Colin Harker (42:45.849)
Yeah, yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (43:05.615)
I did a little bit of math like for a couple of the references to Laura’s age that she is throughout the movie. So in the first scene when she’s approaching Waldo Leidecker, she’s eighteen. And then in, you know, throughout the course of the movie, like the present-day stuff, she’s like 22, 23. So she’s still unbelievably young. She’s so little. And I don’t know how old Tierney was when she was making the movie, but she’s still just a baby. Like she has
Colin Harker (43:15.621)
Mm-hmm.
Colin Harker (43:25.457)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (43:33.39)
The amount of worldliness that this woman has acquired in five years between like 18 and 22 is in it’s it’s too much for 18 to 22, you know? It’s like that’s too much world. That’s too much power that she has for all the money that she has. She’s got a house up in Connecticut, like she’s got a country house in that beautiful Manhattan, you know, apartment that must have cost bajillions of dollars. And you’re just like, that’s too much responsibility for this little girl to have. And she does it.
Colin Harker (43:43.597)
Right. Yeah.
Colin Harker (43:51.056)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (44:01.809)
These marketing jobs, like they pay well.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (44:03.863)
Seriously. my God, I did the math. So again, I also looked up. So at some point, Waldo makes a reference to how much he gets paid to write his column. And he gets paid 50 cents a word in 1944 and a and adjusted for inflation that is $9.60 a word.
Colin Harker (44:17.551)
That’s a lot.
Colin Harker (44:22.481)
That couldn’t there isn’t that had to have been that had to have been a joke. Like there is there is no way.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (44:29.737)
Don’t know because look at those antiques that he has in his house. Like he’s talking. my God, he was making so much money. And when so judging by the same kind of math, when she offers him five thousand dollars to endorse a pen to be the celebrity endorsement for a fountain pen, that’s almost a hundred thousand dollars to be the celebrity endorser.
Colin Harker (44:34.841)
That’s true.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (44:52.661)
Of a fountain pen. And then he goes, and then she got me other deals like that too. So they are dealing in just astronomical amounts of money. And so when he’s walking around going, like, that clock that, you know, he’s like, I love the scene where he’s trying to connive ways to steal back the shit so nobody finds his shotgun. It is so good. And you’re just like, that is so devious. It’s so well plotted. This movie is so well plotted that it.
Colin Harker (45:00.965)
That is crazy.
Colin Harker (45:19.515)
Yeah, yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (45:20.449)
It’s one of those things that if you are a mystery fan, which hopefully you are if you’re listening to this and you are a mystery writer, you kind of go like, I need to watch that again. And you’d find all the little details and all the little breadcrumbs they leave for you.
Colin Harker (45:31.942)
Yeah. It is yeah, no, it the the way that it plants clues and and you know callbacks is just so brilliant. I love the two clocks thing. The two clocks thing just you know, her having, you know, an identical clock to the one that he has because he gifted her kind of its twin. That is just it seems so innocuous in the first viewing and then
Anytime you rewatch the movie, you you’re always looking at the clock, like, I know that’s where yeah, the murder weapon is. It’s it’s
Emily Edwards (she/her) (46:01.794)
Yeah.
it’s so good. It’s so good. Again, there’s a slight difference from the book, and I totally understand why they made it. Is that in the book, Leidecker collects things that are made out of mercury glass. So everything is reflective. And so the cover of Laura, the book, it’s very usually predominantly like a it’s an orb kind of with a distorted woman’s face on it. And that’s like the classic cover of the book, Laura.
And that’s due to the fact that like the clock that he hides something in, or like the thing that he hides something in, is like a mercury glass orb. Like, and so it, you know, and but obviously you can’t shoot around mercury glass. Like, if you are going to be making a movie, you can’t have every surface in the movie be reflective. You can’t do that. So they changed they changed it to different like chotchcas that he has around his apartment. But it does not take away.
Colin Harker (46:48.581)
Yeah. Yeah. That would just yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (46:57.761)
in my opinion, from like just the sheer genius of the crime that that they plot out in the in this mo in this movie.
Colin Harker (47:04.273)
Gosh, yeah, that would visually be so I mean, I’m like thinking of that scene in Lady from Shanghai, like the crazy like funhouse mirrors like shoot out. I’m just like ’cause I’m I’m guessing in the book, like that must be what his his the interior of his apartment must look like. Like just all these reflective surfaces and
Emily Edwards (she/her) (47:10.711)
Mm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (47:20.547)
Yeah. I think of so much of it is because like he only ever thinks about himself. You know, it’s just like Waldo Leidecker literally i the only person in the world is Waldo Leidecker. And so he has like this intense need to view himself. Even it’s so funny to me in the beginning how he’s in the bathtub.
And McPherson comes in to like accuse to talk to him about something. And they don’t show it, obviously, but he gets naked out of the bathtub and says to McPherson, like, hand me my robe. And McPherson is just kind of like, I can’t show how much this is bothering me, but you’re a fucking weirdo. And it’s just so great how, like, they obviously don’t show the naked old man on screen, but like they fully imply that he’s just like,
Colin Harker (47:47.311)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (47:55.361)
Ha
Emily Edwards (she/her) (48:04.269)
This is everything I have. Look at me, McPherson. And they’re just like this is so creepy and
Colin Harker (48:06.639)
Yeah.
And that’s how the movie begins, basically. I mean, and and just from there it just gets crazier. I mean, yeah, no, it’s it’s brilliant. And I I think one of the funniest things about, you know, casting Dana Andrews in the role is he has some of the funniest deadpan expressions. Like you can tell he’s like, these people are are bonkers, but like, you know, he he he he keeps his cool. Like, you know, he keeps that, you know, poker face. And it’s just it’s part of the comedy of the film is he is just such a perfect
kind of foil to to Clifton Webb and Vincent Price and all these others is they’re like sort of bouncing their eccentricities off of him and and he’s refusing. I mean, like, you know, when he gets fed up, he’ll get his little game out, like the little baseball I d I don’t know what you call those games, like where you’re trying to get the
Emily Edwards (she/her) (48:41.593)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (48:59.117)
Having them when I was a really little kid, you know?
Colin Harker (49:01.137)
Yeah, I think too. Yeah, where it’s like you’re trying to get the little ball into the little groove and it’s actually really hard.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (49:07.383)
Yeah. Yeah. But you know, I I love the fact that you brought up the fact that Dana Andrews has like a perfect deadpan when he’s dealing with these absolutely ridiculous things. Cause the one time I noticed that he does break, and it’s a beautiful second, is that when Laura admits to him that she’s not gonna marry Shelby, he gets this little flicker of a smile on his face, and you’re just like, That is perfect acting. It is absolutely perfect.
Colin Harker (49:28.177)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (49:35.341)
Beautiful perfect acting because no one else is subtle. No one else is subtle in the entire movie. And you have Dana Andrews being perfectly cast in this of just being able to do that little slight smile and you’re just like, god damn it, Dana Andrews. Like that was sexy, Dana Andrews.
Colin Harker (49:37.03)
Yeah.
Yep.
Colin Harker (49:51.612)
I I yeah. Yeah. yeah. I I I love I love that moment. It’s just yeah, and and I mean again, I’m obsessed with kind of these old old school noirs and like the micro expressions, because every actor who was casting them was like a genius at them. And you know, that type of film style too, they weren’t afraid to kind of have close-ups, like just sort of focus on people and just sort of let the face, you know, do the talking as much as the script.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (50:04.333)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (50:18.478)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (50:18.577)
And and it really favors that kind of subtle acting. And and the movie does a great job of kind of balancing that campiness with that subtlety. and kind of creating those contrasts. And yeah, no, no, it’s it’s it’s perfect.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (50:26.755)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (50:33.123)
Yeah. No, I think you know, one of the things is this this came out the same year as Gaslight. And I think that one of the things about this movie, and you know, we already brought up the connection to Rebecca, is that it it does so well of making it feel like it’s a haunted house movie because it like the scenes really
only take place in people’s homes. And so you can somewhat kind of feel that it’s all taking place in the same apartment building. It’s all taking place sort of in these extremely confined spaces. He only ever takes Laura to the police station. And it’s just, and you know, they do dip up to Connecticut. And Connecticut is such like an interesting code for like wildness and people doing wrong things in these kinds of movies. And it’s the state I grew up into. And like in the in the book they name check what town she’s from and I was like, she’s got
Colin Harker (51:16.27)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (51:24.131)
Money. Like it’s it’s real money happening there. And it’s just so interesting how deftly they make this movie that is not about ghosts, that is not about haunted houses, that is not about these things, feels so supernatural and so scary and so ominous the entire time.
Colin Harker (51:41.349)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (51:45.318)
That is so true. I mean, you know, the the really obvious one is, you know, what we’ve discussed with kind of that the portrait of of of the dead large. It’s so beautiful and haunting. but the interiors are so strange too. I mean, you Waldo’s apartment just has all of these antiques, like all the little masks on the wall, and ever everything just feels very crowded and dense and it’s gorgeous, but it’s also just a lot in a really overwhelming way. And Lara’s apartment too.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (51:53.924)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (51:59.181)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (52:09.292)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (52:15.291)
There’s something about it, it’s almost so feminine as to be kind of it’s it’s beautiful but it’s kind of cloying because it’s like you feel overpowered by this personality that’s kind of the opposite of McPherson’s.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (52:23.446)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (52:28.372)
Yeah, and it feels like a boudoir. You know what I mean? Like there’s drapery everywhere and it and there there’s rippling folds of fabric everywhere. And you’re just like, this feels like a bordello almost.
Colin Harker (52:31.355)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (52:40.087)
Yeah. I mean it it almost it I mean, obviously the sets are much classier and more expensive, but in some ways it reminds me a little bit of the interiors in Dark Shadows where it’s kind of like you just have all of these curtains, all of these, you know, sumptuous, you know, pieces of furniture and everything to kind of give this sense of like wealth and, you know, antiquity.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (52:51.5)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (53:02.029)
And and Laura’s apartment, I think I think part of what makes her apartment so haunting, especially before she comes back, is the fact that it contrasts so deeply with everything McPherson is. Like he is just this very Spartan, stoic kind of, you know, poker face, you know, I’m the hard oil detective. And then he finds himself kind of enclosed in this interior that’s made up of, you know, these beautiful fabrics and dresses and perfumes.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (53:12.897)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (53:27.831)
And and you know, there’s a way in which y he’s the intruder, you know, like he can go through her things, but it feels like he’s kind of trapped and kind of enclosed by this world. And it sort of feels like in terms of power, it’s like he is not the one with the upper hand. Like it’s like the interiority of her apartment has like kind of, you know, overwhelmed him and in enclosed him. And
Emily Edwards (she/her) (53:35.224)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (53:49.252)
Yeah. And also like what a power move is it to have a portrait of yourself over your own fireplace. Like talk about something that like is really weird. Like who has a painted portrait of themselves? Like that’s bizarre.
Colin Harker (53:55.025)
I know.
Colin Harker (54:01.735)
Yeah.
I know. I mean again it’s like it’s like something that would be totally normal in a gothic movie. But in a but in a movie like this, you know, set in nineteen forties in New York, it’s odd. It it is.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (54:12.143)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (54:18.157)
Yeah, because it makes you feel very first Mrs. DeWinter with the pearls and the black velvet. And you’re just kind of like, yeah, I get that that was the same Judith Anderson setting this broad up for absolute, absolute failure. And you’re just like, my gosh, like it’s it’s such a power move to be like, you know who owns this place? That lady. You know, it is like, this is my dynasty, this is mine. And it’s like, it might just be a co-op, but like she’s like, I
Colin Harker (54:22.245)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (54:39.579)
Here.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (54:45.547)
own it and I am like the lady of the manor. And in that way, like she and Waldo really mirror each other. And you’re just kind of like, you know, you kind of feel towards the end of this that like obviously she and McPherson are gonna try something, but I think she’s too weird for McPherson. Like I think he’s gonna be like in a couple of years, he’s just gonna be like, have a nice day, lady, and like go find like go find the housekeeper and marry her. Go marry Bessie who is
Colin Harker (54:53.232)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (55:00.731)
Mm-hmm.
Colin Harker (55:12.655)
Yeah. Yeah. She is. I mean, I think one of the things I actually really love about this movie is the fact Lara in a lot of ways is a femme fatal. She she draws, you know, these people to her and you know, irresistibly with her charisma. She’s very strong willed and ambitious. And, you know, sh she doesn’t apologize for that.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (55:14.486)
Way more normal.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (55:23.715)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (55:37.89)
And yeah, I mean, you know, even having the portrait of herself, like that is a femme fatal move. It’s kind of like, look at me, like in in all my beauty and all my power. And I and yet the movie, you know, doesn’t portray her as a villain because she isn’t a villain. Like she is just this very strong-willed charismatic woman who is like very aware of her ambition and her charisma. And it’s just such an interesting way to kind of position the classic femme fatal, not
Emily Edwards (she/her) (55:42.542)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (56:05.923)
as a villain, but as a you know, actually kind of more as a I don’t want to say victim because she has a she’s too strong to be a victim. But you know, I she’s this person who is being hunted by a murderer who is obsessed with her. So in that sense in the you know narrative, she isn’t a villain. She’s the one who is being victimized. And that’s just such an interesting
Emily Edwards (she/her) (56:14.348)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (56:27.075)
Yeah. There’s a very like Cape Fear element to the way that Waldo like hunts her, where he’s just like, That’s a trophy. I have to have. I need to, you know, it’s like I I’m stalking her. I’m making I’m entrapping her. I’m making sure that she can have no life outside of me, which are very, very, very classic, you know, signs of an abusive relationship of like
Colin Harker (56:48.399)
No.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (56:49.015)
You know, there is an element of financial abuse of like he’s helped her with the career, sh he’s done all these things. Like if Waldo wasn’t in her life, would she have this much money in the future if she ever like broke up their friendship? There’s he dresses her, he makes you know, he’s at some point in the movie, he goes, I made sure she had a more flattering hairstyle. And it goes to the hairstyle and it’s hideous. It’s awful. Like it’s not more flattering. She just looks it’s just different. And he’s just like
I cultivated every single thing about her. But because, you know, there isn’t like a sexual nature to it, because it’s so clear both in the book and in the movie that they are not having sex, that it that like it maybe doesn’t clock as abuse to to people who are more used to it being your romantic or sexual partner who’s doing these things to you.
Colin Harker (57:34.609)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (57:41.084)
Yeah, it is so interesting to kind of compare it to Vertigo, you know, with Jimmy Stewart, you know, dressing Kim Novak’s character up. But you know, in that context there is that sexual component. Whereas, yeah, you’re right, it’s like it’s very intellectual. It’s kind of like he’s he’s dressing her up, he’s making her a part of his collection, like, you know, his antique bases and and his clocks and all his other and yeah, there is something kinda
Emily Edwards (she/her) (57:44.888)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (57:55.822)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (58:02.073)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (58:07.983)
Yeah, I won’t say creepier because the the the sexually predatory nature in Vertigo is very disturbing, but it’s so different from what we’re used to seeing in that kind of dynamic.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (58:13.817)
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I feel like one of the things that is actually very unnerving as like a modern cis heterosexual woman while watching this is that oftentimes you’re like, I will just remove men from my life so I don’t or like the heterosexual men from my life so I don’t get preyed upon. And that is a real instinct that you go through, like at some point in your life, where you’re just like, I will only have my gay bestie who’s going to like, you know, he won’t do those things to me. But then you have your coded gay bestie in this movie.
Colin Harker (58:31.481)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (58:48.815)
Who is all who’s probably abusing her more than even her money-grubbing shitty fiancé, who everybody thinks is the person who murdered her.
Colin Harker (58:58.029)
Right. Yeah, I mean, I think the movie does a great job of kind of showing different types of abuse because it’s like d he he has this kind of control freaky way of, you know, wanting to, you know, direct her mind, and and you know, direct who she goes out with. her aunt as well is, you know, somebody who she should be able to find kind of, you know, safety from and yet is is just seeing her as direct competition.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (59:21.433)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (59:24.952)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (59:25.669)
And and it is kind of destabilizing the way that the movie doesn’t show, you know, the types of abuse we’re used to seeing, but kind of more subtle types of abuse that you know, Laura herself kind of excuses for a long time before she, you know, realizes, you know, this is just not working, like you’re you’re a control freak and I need you out of my life.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (59:40.025)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (59:46.167)
Yeah. And what’s really crazy to me, one of the biggest twists of this whole thing is the fact that Vera Caspery did not say she was a mystery novelist. She did not believe that Laura was a noir, it was a mystery, it was nothing. She was just like, no, I wrote a story about a career girl.
Colin Harker (01:00:05.882)
Really?
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:00:06.973)
Yeah!
Colin Harker (01:00:08.529)
Okay, wait, wait, wait just a minute. So so did she did she consider the novel as not genre fiction but as sort of, you know, mainstream like
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:00:12.656)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:00:19.3)
Like kind of straight up kind of like literary fiction about being a career woman in New York City, because that’s what she was. She was like an advert I think she was an advertising copywriter like Laura. And she was just kind of like, Nope, this is just a story about women at work. And you’re like, What have you been through, Vera Caspery? my god.
Colin Harker (01:00:39.513)
I’m like, wait, how do you cause how do you simultaneously do that while being like, and by the way, one of the characters in this is, you know, loosely based on Count Fosco from The Woman in White. Like That is so funny.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:00:53.432)
I I don’t know how you don’t set out to write one of the greatest mystery novels of all time and create one of the greatest mystery movies of all time without setting out to do that. But that’s it. She was just kind of like, it’s not genre fiction. Like I’m glad you’re reading it and you really like it, but that’s not what I intended to write.
Colin Harker (01:01:00.741)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:01:05.806)
That is so pretty.
Colin Harker (01:01:11.887)
That is so I I am always fascinated honestly by the relationship of writers to genre. because because a lot of the time, you know, like if if you read broadly, like you know all the tropes, whether you think that you were recreating them or not, like you know, sometimes that happens. And I mean I I know for me, you know, like when I’m writing my gothic novels, like I I’m
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:01:18.244)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:01:28.357)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:01:35.824)
Definitely don’t think I’m writing like, you know, a noir story. But I will often be, you know, very influenced by a lot of kind of like the twists and the turns in kind of, you know, noir narrative. And I guess I can kind of see how maybe she was sort of like, Yeah, I’m writing a, you know, a story about a career woman. But you know, she has all these tropes in her head, like, you know, these hard boiled tropes, and they just they just emerge and Yeah, I don’t know. That is so strange though. Cause it has a murder in it. It’s like there’s an investigation.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:01:43.939)
Mm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:01:57.209)
Yeah. Isn’t that incredible? Yeah. And there’s a cop who’s researching it. Like it’s really, really fascinating. Kind of like I I read there’s a huge book from like last the end of last year called The God of the Woods. And it it’s it’s really, really good. And it just made the list of like the hundred best thrillers of like the first couple decades of the 21st century. And it is not a thriller by any
Colin Harker (01:02:14.097)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:02:26.332)
Psh, way sh like there’s a mystery in it, but it’s not a thriller. Like there’s murder in it, but it’s not a thriller. And I wouldn’t even call it a murder mystery. It’s straight up litfic. And you’re just kind of like, I don’t know where you got thriller out of this, but enough people did that they’re qualifying this as a thriller. It’s literary fiction through and through. And you’re just like,
Colin Harker (01:02:45.529)
I I’m like who who comes up i i I don’t know, like it’s like marketing marketing agencies, you know, like where Lara worked, it’s like they come up with these they they come up with these extra. Yeah. That is so funny. Wow.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:02:53.4)
Yeah, exactly. She’s just kind of like, how are we gonna do this? How are we gonna get this to fly off the shelves? And brilliant people did, man. Cause like to people listening, if you have not read the book and not seen this movie, like I know we spoiled the end of it, but it actually doesn’t spoil it at all to like know who done it at the end of this. This is one of those things where you watch it and it is even if you know exactly beat for beat what’s going to happen, it is a
gripping movie and it is so well done.
Colin Harker (01:03:26.991)
Yeah, and I mean, you know, like I said, it is so funny. I mean, you know, we couldn’t go through every single hilarious one liner zinger and and you you are in for a treat if you watch this, because it is it the script is just brilliant. I mean, I consider it, you know, on the level of the Maltese Falcon and the big sleep in terms of just one of the wittiest like film noir scripts of the nineteen forties.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:03:37.583)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:03:45.408)
absolutely.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:03:50.457)
And a lot of them come from Vincent Price, who is so good at delivering these sort of zingers. Like at some point, he’s just like only losers whine. And you’re just like, I love you, Vincent Price. Like, this is A plus acting from Vincent Price. It’s A plus acting from absolutely everybody in it. Like we’ve spoken at length about Gene Tierney and Joseph and I’m sorry, Dana Andrews, just absolutely phenomenal. Like, again, flawless.
Colin Harker (01:03:53.797)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:04:02.114)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:04:16.496)
Flawless movie. I can’t thank him enough for suggesting it. It’s so good.
Colin Harker (01:04:21.203)
yeah, no, this was so much fun to talk about as well. And honestly, it’s just it’s strange to me that this movie isn’t more well known. I I I think among noir aficionados, you know, it’s it’s pretty it’s pretty mainstream, but I think outside of kind of, you know, us nerds who love nineteen forties film, it’s n yeah, it’s it’s not a household, you know, name among film books, which is a shame. Like it’s it’s great.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:04:29.05)
I know.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:04:47.664)
It’s directed by Otto Preminger for the record, too. Like, this is like an amazing director. I think one thing with the one of the reasons why maybe a lot of people don’t pick it up is that the log line that they used to sell it, I know we’re going way over, but like the log line they used to sell it is a police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he’s investigating. And I’m like, yeah, but no, like that’s not like that to me is the least interesting thing about this movie.
Colin Harker (01:04:50.126)
What do you?
Colin Harker (01:04:59.429)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:05:09.509)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:05:14.191)
Yeah, I mean yeah, like there is that element, and that element is I I mean, I love how gothic that element is. The I think the problem with that tagline is it makes it sound more Hitchcocky and then it is. The way that the movie handles it is much more, I would say, kind of gothic fairy tale than gothic horror. I I mean
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:05:26.595)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:05:33.231)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:05:36.44)
It it is really interesting to kind of compare this one to Hitchcock in so many ways because it has so many elements that he loved, like kind of voyeurism, kind of weird sort of control freak villains. yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like all these constant, you know, kind of plot twists and sort of a protagonist who himself is kind of weird and voyeuristic. Like these are all classic Hitchcock elements, but I feel like the way that the
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:05:48.332)
Mm-hmm. Highly sexual women that most people hate for some reason. Like
Colin Harker (01:06:06.415)
That Preminger handles it is so different. He handles it in a very kind of like romantic, straightforward, non-I mean, there are there are very creepy moments, but mainly it’s it’s handled in a kind of as a portrait of a guy falling in love with this woman’s really charismatic interiority as well as her beauty. And I think that that is just really interesting and
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:06:24.698)
Yeah. Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:06:31.025)
you know, I I I love Rebecca, but I think, you know, anyone who watches that movie is sort of like, I would love to kind of see a, you know, a narrative that deals with Rebecca herself. Like, you know, kind kind of, you know, give us the audience the ability to kind of confront that sort of charisma and that hard edge. And I feel like this movie kind of in a way does that. I mean Laura obviously is not the horrible person that Rebecca is.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:06:40.173)
Yes.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:06:50.83)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:06:54.831)
But she has like that similar sort of like, you know, drawing people in her orbit, like very ambitious, very driven and free willed. And I really feel like this movie would make a great companion piece, you know, slash double feature with Rebecca.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:07:08.43)
Yeah. Like talk about like one of the reasons why I cannot stand things like Jane Eyre and Rebecca to an extent is and don’t get me wrong, I know that they’re brilliant, but there are certain aspects of it that I can’t can stand. And a lot of that is because Jane Eyre herself and the second Mrs. DeWinter, they they put themselves in subservient positions to their husbands and their intended, you know, like their love interests. And one thing Laura never does.
Colin Harker (01:07:30.875)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:07:37.827)
Is make herself subservient to the men around her. Even when she is, you know, she finds Dana Andrews in her apartment and she’s just kind of like, Let’s go make breakfast. She goes, Like, I’m gonna make bacon and eggs, but you’re gonna make the coffee. And she never, ever, ever lets herself be a servant to the men around her. You know, she’s just like.
Colin Harker (01:07:40.079)
Right.
Colin Harker (01:07:54.266)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:08:01.239)
Shelby, you’re broke as a joke, but you’re gonna work for your money. And you know, and I think that her aunt is like, I’m happy to have gorgeous Vincent Price, you know, like in my bed and I’ll just pay for it because that’s what we both want. And Laura is so different in that way that there’s like it’s almost like Vera Caspery was like, I’m gonna take Rebecca and then not make the second Mrs. DeWinter like an absolute spineless piece of shit. She is.
Colin Harker (01:08:10.895)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:08:27.759)
Yeah. I know. I know. Which like Joe Fontaine does such a great job with that. But you’re you just wanna like reach through the screen and be like, Will you please grow a backbone? I mean, god.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:08:31.044)
Ha ha ha.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:08:40.752)
Seriously. You’re just like, just take the car and leave. It’s fine.
Colin Harker (01:08:45.361)
This is this is like why my favorite character in Rebecca is Mrs. Danvers. Like, no joke. Like, she’s just so much fun. Like
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:08:51.176)
Yeah, I I love calling her the danger lesbian because she’s just like
Loved I loved Rebecca so thoroughly and so like again like I consumed every aspect of Rebecca. She was mine. I used to touch her hair, you know, and she’s so creepy. And then she’s just like, and you’re not her, so I’m gonna make your life a living hell. And again, you just want to be like, hey, second Mrs. DeWinter, who never even gets a name, can you just tell this old woman to go fuck herself and leave? And it’s like, it’s the 1930s and or 40s. You can just go.
Colin Harker (01:09:07.539)
I know.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:09:26.898)
No, like but she has no concept of that whatsoever.
Colin Harker (01:09:29.116)
Yeah.
mean, I mean, yeah, I I know this like this podcast is not about Rebecca, but like one of the weirdest, funniest things about the second Mrs. DeWinter is the fact that when she finds out that Maxim killed Rebecca, she’s relieved because she’s like she’s like, phew, like you didn’t actually love her. Okay, okay, got it. Like like not, my gosh, my husband is a murderer. Just, phew, okay, like I don’t have to, you know, compete with a dead woman anymore. I’m like, girl, where are you?
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:10:01.585)
Whereas I think Laura, I mean, because the books are so like, you know, like like the ambiance of the books or and the movies are so similar in that like it’s that big like someone is watching you, someone is trying to make something of you that you’re not. When Laura gets that talk, that creepy ass talking to from her aunt, where she’s just where they like they’re in this party.
Colin Harker (01:10:01.628)
Priorities. Like
Colin Harker (01:10:13.565)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:10:26.938)
That is celebrating that Laura is alive and her aunt comes into the room and she’s like, I can take you out of this world anytime I want. And Laura’s just kind of like, Good chat. We’re never gonna talk again.
Colin Harker (01:10:40.675)
Yeah. I I know that the I I love that moment ’cause Laura’s like, I am so done with you and Shelby. Like, you know, whatever. Like I I don’t care anymore. Yeah, it’s it’s great.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:10:46.532)
Yes
And she’s so it’s so like because it’s a power move on both of the women’s parts where you have literally Mrs. Danvers going, like, I can take you out of this world and have no compunction about it. And Laura’s just kind of like, I will remove you from my sphere of influence and have absolutely no compunction about it. Both those women are and they’re the only two women like in the movie, aside from Bessie, who’s not given a whole lot to do, but like they’re the only women in the movie, and they’re just kind of like, We control our situation and we’re
Colin Harker (01:10:55.365)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:11:19.364)
Moving on from one another.
Colin Harker (01:11:21.593)
It’s it’s so yeah, it really is so great. And honestly, I feel like it does such a good job of showing because you know, you mentioned like Jane Eyre and Rebecca, which are kind of classic gothic texts, and I think Laura does a great job of showing how the gothic does not necessarily rely on having, you know, these sort of wilting violet protagonists.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:11:39.684)
Yeah, women running through the moors in their nightgowns kind of thing.
Colin Harker (01:11:44.004)
Yeah, I mean you can you can have a gothic where the heroine is basically, you know, a good version of a femme fatal. Like she’s strong willed, she’s independent, you know, she’s not gonna take shit from anyone. but at the same time, you know, she’s not a predator. Like she’s not, you know, out to steal and, you know, corrupt. She’s just wants to live her life, you know, like a man would and
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:12:01.99)
Mm-hmm.
Colin Harker (01:12:06.883)
Yeah, the movie does a great job of having a heroine like that while still having those, you know, beautiful kind of gothic tropes of, you know, the portrait of the, you know, dead, beautiful lady and all of this and that haunted atmosphere. And I mean, like speaking of the haunted atmosphere, one of the real things I love about the very end of the movie is the way that it ends with Lara putting the radio on and hearing Waldo talk about love and quote that eerie poem.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:12:18.106)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:12:36.815)
W at the same time as Waldo is leva closing in to kill her, like the disembodied voice, you know, juxtaposed it’s so creepy and like was that in the book or is that a movie thing?
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:12:36.942)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:12:43.472)
So creepy.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:12:50.586)
Think it was. I think it was because, you know, he gives the excuse of like, I have to go now because I have to go do something on the radio. Like he has to go do his interstitial on the radio. And then I think the conceit that at the end where they go like this was brought to you by like the technology of recording, because it’s taking place in the nineteen forties, you know, and she realizes that like he’s not at the studio. And so like the things that’s going bump in the night is her best friend. I’m pretty sure it is.
in the book. I don’t recall exactly, but it it’s such a good again, like, because a lot of the the the gothic tales, they’re like what also happens when you introduce modernity to like, you know, like I’m even thinking of something like Udolfo where like
Colin Harker (01:13:34.137)
Right.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:13:39.099)
They’re like, no, what if a woman wants to choose her own spouse? no, what are we going to do with like people having agency and this new modern concept? And you’re just kind of like the like the the looming sort of threat of modernity is often part of of Gothic narratives. And like the fact that she’s going to, she didn’t think that like Waldo could record something being two places at once, which again, like very supernatural. Like, how is he going to be in two places at once? And you’re just like,
so much of this is so well thought out and so good and so creepy and so otherworldly.
Colin Harker (01:14:16.643)
It really is. And I mean, I it’s it’s just so eerie too, because you know, he’s talking about love, but you know, for him, like love is this kind of control. So there’s like this weird way in which when you hear his voice, it it kind of dovetails with all those moments in the movie earlier when we’re hearing his voiceover and he’s talking about Lara and and it’s sort of another voiceover moment, but it’s one that we all hear, like, you know, that that Lara is listening to as well.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:14:40.431)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:14:45.269)
And it’s just so creepy and there there is something kind of tragic about the ending. You know, you know, he he I mean, Waldo is a terrible person. He’s a control freak. He tried to murder Lara. Like he’s he’s not a good person. That said, the ending there is something just very sad about it because you do kind of buy what he says when he says that Lara sort of brought out the goodness in him, you know, what goodness there was in him. You do believe.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:14:52.602)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:15:15.067)
that at least he believed that and that there was a way in which he had this kind of spiritual connection with her. And the I feel like the ending really sells kind of, you know, the horror of sort of that, you know, predatory r relationship that they had, but also kind of the tragedy of, you know, what could have been if he hadn’t been that kind of person. If he had sort of allowed himself to open himself to this relationship, which he did, but in a way that wasn’t control freaky.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:15:17.103)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:15:35.15)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:15:44.86)
There is like that kind of sense of tragedy. And you know, Lara herself, you know, she says to McPherson, that sort of, you know, blocking Waldo out of her life is the hardest thing she’s ever done. So you get the sense that these two were very close. Like they were best friends. And yeah, it’s just really
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:15:45.017)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:15:58.244)
Yeah. Yeah.
I I think at the end when she’s hearing him on the radio talking about something that’s very prescient to her understanding what’s happening to her right now. And also like when he gets caught and he gives kind of like a soliloquy about his feelings about Laura, I feel like that’s the first time Laura ever heard Waldo talk about her and about how he feels about her. And she thought that maybe they had much more of a
you know, sympatico sort of like, we’re on the same path together kind of thing. And it might have really been the first time that she realized she was a subject or like an object in her his life rather than a subject in his life. And like you get the imprint that like she’s so disoriented by the end of it. And not because her marriage is, you know, not going through and not because her aunt is now out of the picture, but because she really thought she had this incredible foundation.
Colin Harker (01:16:40.646)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:16:55.938)
And it’s and it’s just been yoinked out from underneath her. And like, I really don’t think that like she had ever thought of herself as a, you know, an item in Waldo’s collection. And she’s so undone by that. And like the real the uncle tragedy of realizing that like you’re not a person to other people.
Is again something that you realize about when you’re, you know, in your early 20s, and oftentimes when you’re like you’re so inward focused, and you’re like, these are all the things that I want to accomplish, and these are all the things that I want to do. And then usually by the time you’re like 25, you realize, like, people are using me, people see me as a role in their life and not an actual human being with my own wants, desires, convictions, and goals. Like, she’s having this real sort of
You know, like crash course and being a human.
Colin Harker (01:17:47.738)
Yeah. I I mean it I I mean if it yeah, if it was like if the movie was told from her point of view, it would be kind of a really dark coming of age, you know, buildings roman where where where she she’s learning not only kind of, you know, about herself and, you know, her her own independence, but the truth of the people around her and you know, who’s fake and who is real. You know, like people people like Bessie and McPherson are, you know, real and authentic.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:17:57.978)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:18:09.572)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:18:14.695)
in their you know, connection with her, whereas people like you know, Waldo and Shelby and her aunt are are kind of trying to use her or see her as a kind of threat. And I mean, in that sense, the story is truly dark because it’s like she really loses kind of everything at the end. she gets McPherson, which is amazing. And I do hope fingers crossed, in spite of her weirdness, that they that they will stay together.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:18:28.943)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:18:37.808)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:18:41.309)
but but yeah, I mean, you know, she loses her aunt, you know, she realizes her aunt is is just very, you know, creepy possessive, threatened by her. she loses her fiance, she loses her best friend. It’s just really tragic. And I do like how the movie, you know, just kind of ends on that tragic note and then just ends. Like there’s no kind of coda, like that’s just that’s just it, which adds to the haunting nature of that ending.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:18:54.884)
Mm-hmm.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:19:08.046)
Yeah. And and there’s no real like, you know, oftentimes at the end of like noir movies, you’ve got Bogart and Bacal smooching and there’s a romantic swell in the music. And there isn’t really that same sense of like romantic finality, you know, like there’s not really like a turn around and kiss me kind of like romantic Hollywood moment. She’s just kind of like, Thanks for keeping me from getting a shotgun to the face, which would be a truly, truly horrific way to die.
Colin Harker (01:19:15.025)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:19:20.805)
No
Colin Harker (01:19:24.945)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:19:35.94)
But other than that, like please take this man out of my sight and get out of my apartment. She’s just finally like at the point where she’s like, everybody out. I need to be by myself.
Colin Harker (01:19:47.312)
That it that is really true. I mean, I think they have like one kiss, but I the movie actually handles their romance pretty realistically because it’s like, you know, they’re both going through a lot in terms of like just trying to decode what’s going on.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:19:51.587)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:20:00.901)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:20:01.132)
And it makes sense that even though there is this mutual attraction, that it’s, you know, like very hesitant and kind of subordinated to all of these other much more pressing things that are going on. And I I do like that about the movie, that it handles their, you know, relationship and their budding romance in a way that feels very realistic. Like we can see, you know, down the road that they will be together, but the movie doesn’t sort of force that into the narrative in a premature way.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:20:09.092)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:20:21.786)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:20:27.953)
‘Cause I think that would have kind of made it feel very cloying and just like unrealistic and not really you know, wouldn’t really fit the vibe of the movie.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:20:35.34)
Absolutely. Like I really can’t thank you enough for taking like an hour and a half to talk to me about this. Cause I could talk all day about this movie. It’s it’s incredible. And you mentioned before we started recording that you’ve seen this movie like a dozen or more times. And I was like, I can absolutely see how you can just sit down and turn on Laura and experience it in just like in in a new way almost every single time.
Colin Harker (01:20:44.84)
my gosh. I could
Colin Harker (01:21:01.167)
Yeah, no, I I I still remember when I was a kid and I first watched this, I actually checked it out from Blockbuster. Like that is how long ago. We’re talking like late nineties, like early two thousands. And yeah, I mean I was just so psyched. you know, because when you read about a movie, you know, a classic movie in a book, like you can get pretty hyped because the critics do a great job, you know, talking about them, dissecting. And you know, there’s always like a chance that the movie will not really live up.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:21:09.462)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:21:24.293)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:21:30.705)
To you know what the analysts and the academics say about it. This one did. Like I was just completely entranced beginning to end. And I was like, how do more people not talk about this movie? It is literally on the level of the great, you know, Bogart Noirs, the great Hitchcocks. but it does feel like just this really wonderful kind of hidden gem of a kind of gothic noir melodrama hybrid. yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:21:35.213)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:21:52.474)
Yeah.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:21:57.584)
It’s just perfect. you know, I can’t thank you enough for this. Like how can everybody keep in touch with you and your work?
Colin Harker (01:22:04.809)
so I am on Instagram at Colin Harker Author. I’m also on Blue Sky as Lord Steerpike. and yeah, like like I said before, I’ve got my novel The Feast of the Innocents, set in seventeenth century Scotland. It’s it’s got a fair amount of murder mystery elements to it too, you know, like a stalking French assassin and all these weird, like mysterious ritual murders.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:22:29.636)
Sounds so good. Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:22:31.503)
Yeah, no, no, it was it was a lot of fun to write and kind of, you know, have juxtapose those, you know, gothic elements with sort of like the murder mystery, who done it vibe as well. but yeah, yeah, I I love kind of sort of bringing out that kind of mystery element in the gothic because I do feel like that is a core part of the roots of the genre. I mean, you you would not have kind of, you know, the Scooby-Doo sort of, you know, rational
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:22:53.658)
Yeah.
Colin Harker (01:22:59.555)
murder mystery without, you know, Anne Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho and Godwin’s Caleb Williams and all of these, you know, deep psychological explorations.
Emily Edwards (she/her) (01:23:10.832)
my gosh. So if you have any thoughts on what we’ve said about Laura or or anything else, feel free to reach out to us on socials and and this has been an absolute blast.
Colin Harker (01:23:22.982)
Thank you for having me. This was so much fun.
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