Photofest
Otto Preminger, US 1944
Print source: Academy Film Archive
Running time: 88 minutes
About the print
This print was gifted to the Academy by Twentieth Century-Fox in 1948. This pre-release version includes footage that was cut for its theatrical distribution. Though there are several splices in the print, and some scratches of varying degrees visible throughout, the image still sparkles through. Shrinkage: 0.7%
About the film
“It’s all packaged in a civilized and witty script, and the direction is keen and alert and misses no bets. Even if you should guess the murderer right off, it won’t spoil your pleasure, and there is a satisfying psychological fillip at the end, especially if you’ve read Aldous Huxley’s fascinating article in the November Harper’s, entitled ‘Who Are You?,’ and are wise to the eternal conflict between the cerebrotonic and the somatotonic.”
– Albert Goldberg, Chicago Daily Tribune, November 17, 1944
“The bulk of the film is a sort of sociological document. Preminger should be congratulated for keeping it hard and vicious. . . . Clifton Webb brings his exacerbating assurance to every sequence in Laura as the columnist and radio personality who launches a career and then regrets it. Judith Anderson, one of the finest actresses on screen or stage, gives a brilliantly modulated performance of the gigolo’s ‘protectress,’ putting Miss Tierney in what can only be called the shade on numerous occasions.”
– Howard Barnes, New York Herald Tribune, October 12, 1944