I add many films to my list from many different sources and now that we’ve watched many of the great classics, we’re moving on to films that aren’t quite universally acclaimed but may be notable. This one turned out to be a very competent noir of the period with a contrived twist and seems to have been beloved enough to inspire several episodes of popular television shows. Unfortunately it’s not anything that I would call great and not really worth going back for.

Detective Mark McPherson is assigned to investigate the murder of Laura Hunt, a beautiful advertising executive. He first goes to see Waldo Lydecker, a famous and wealthy writer and columnist. An arrogant man Lydecker, who is much older than Laura, considers himself to be her mentor. Though his relationship with Laura is platonic, he is possessive of her and is jealous of her fiancé Shelby Carpenter. When questioned, Carpenter turns out to be a playboy who lives on the largesse of Laura’s aunt, Ann Treadwell. On the day that Laura was killed, Lydecker had confronted her with evidence that Carpenter is also seeing Diane Redfern, a model in Laura’s employ. Laura was supposed to be reconsidering her engagement with Carpenter in a house in the countryside. Meanwhile as McPherson works on the case, staring up at Laura’s portrait in her living room and reading through her letters, he seems to be falling in love with her as well.

I avoided outright spoiling the key twist in the plot here but that hardly matters as it’s been reused so many times in television shows. At heart, it’s really just a straightforward murder mystery with two obvious suspects. Both have compelling motives to kill her and both engage in all manner of small deceptions that McPherson has to unravel. The added complication here is that he falls for her himself. That might be the kind of development that was acceptable at the time but it’s very offputting nowadays. The film treats both Lydecker and Carpenter as being assholes in their own respective ways, yet McPherson being so unprofessional as to get emotionally involved as well as seems fine. There’s nothing really complicated about the plot or the psychology of the characters by modern standards so this was all kind of humdrum for me.

This might still have been something special if the performances were better. Unfortunately Gene Tierney is underwhelming as Laura as the role really calls for someone with a much more dominant screen presence. Someone like Marlene Dietrich who was originally supposed to star would have resulted in a drastically better film. Clifton Webb is fine as the imperious Waldo Lydecker but isn’t enough to save the film. There isn’t any deeper meaning in it beyond having the person investigating a murder falling in love with the victim and subsequently having her turn up alive. All in all, I struggle to find a reason why anyone should want to watch this.