54. LAURA (1944), with Moira Redmond

When we talk about Laura, of course, I don't think it's a story about heroes and villains so much.

It is about-

True.

Mm-hmm

... characters who do things for odd, strange, dark reasons.

But you have access to who they really are, to a certain extent.

And yet, at the same time, it's presented obliquely, 'cause it's a mystery.

What would be the two-line description of what Laura is? And we should say, so Laura was a novel by Vera Caspary, and then became a movie directed and produced by, mostly, Ot- Otto Preminger in 1944.

So how would you, if you had to tell somebody about it, what would you tell them it was actually really about?

The book is about a detective who becomes obsessed by a murder victim, who is a beautiful young woman.

And it's also about her, because she is the focus of everybody's attention, and there are a couple of characters revolving around this, and here we go with the question, is she really dead?

Which we're gonna get to, 'cause it's very important-

Which we're gonna get to

... to find out whether she's well and truly-

Yes

... and completely dead, yes.

Do you remember when you first read the book and when you first saw the film?

Roughly, I do.

Um, as I'm always saying to young people who you can imagine how interested they are in this [laughs], back in the '80s, we didn't have streaming, we didn't have Netflix.

Video recorders were fairly new, but Channel 4 and BBC 2, English television, they competed with each other to do series of interesting films.

Um, the programming was fantastic.

They would do series of directors or actors, and if there was something you wanted to see, it would be there.

It would come eventually.

And we did just start having video recorders so you could record it, and Laura was one of, was the kind of black and white noir-ish movie that I had really wanted to see, and eventually it came up on one of those channels.

I can't remember which.

When we talk about Laura, of course, I don't think it's a story about heroes and villains so much.

It is about-

True.

Mm-hmm

... characters who do things for odd, strange, dark reasons.

But you have access to who they really are, to a certain extent.

And yet, at the same time, it's presented obliquely, 'cause it's a mystery.

What would be the two-line description of what Laura is? And we should say, so Laura was a novel by Vera Caspary, and then became a movie directed and produced by, mostly, Ot- Otto Preminger in 1944.

So how would you, if you had to tell somebody about it, what would you tell them it was actually really about?

The book is about a detective who becomes obsessed by a murder victim, who is a beautiful young woman.

And it's also about her, because she is the focus of everybody's attention, and there are a couple of characters revolving around this, and here we go with the question, is she really dead?

Which we're gonna get to, 'cause it's very important-

Which we're gonna get to

... to find out whether she's well and truly-

Yes

... and completely dead, yes.

Do you remember when you first read the book and when you first saw the film?

Roughly, I do.

Um, as I'm always saying to young people who you can imagine how interested they are in this [laughs], back in the '80s, we didn't have streaming, we didn't have Netflix.

Video recorders were fairly new, but Channel 4 and BBC 2, English television, they competed with each other to do series of interesting films.

Um, the programming was fantastic.

They would do series of directors or actors, and if there was something you wanted to see, it would be there.

It would come eventually.

And we did just start having video recorders so you could record it, and Laura was one of, was the kind of black and white noir-ish movie that I had really wanted to see, and eventually it came up on one of those channels.

I can't remember which.