Laura, My Love

There are a few things that I do on a daily basis. Shower, check my email, utter the phrase "Oscar-winning." You know, the usual. And, of course, there is nare a day where I don't think about one of my all-time favorite movies, the one to the left. Laura is one of the finest things that I have ever had the pleasure at viewing (cinematic or otherwise). Simply put, I don't think there is a movie that I am in love with more than Laura. Casablanca is my favorite, The English Patient is the one I'm most passionate about, but I long for Laura. The mystery, the wit, the stylish direction and production, I can't get enough. It's the best film that Alfred Hitchcock never directed. And that cast, from the smoky Gene Tierney to the lugheaded Vincent Price to the "neanderthal" Dana Andrews to the stony Judith Anderson to the monument to verbal venom, Clifton Webb, there's a sumptuous feast of thespian antics in this film. Simply mentioning this movie puts me into a trance-I'll just sigh, go off into my beautiful Preminger world, with a whisper of, "Laura."

And, though Oscar never seems to get these things right, the fact that he had both Laura and Double Indemnity to give a trophy for in 1944, and yet it was Going My Way that swept the trophies still irks me.