Film noir could become my favorite film genre

Laura

After seeing “Die Legende von Paul und Paula”, I must admit that “Laura” has become much less important to me now. With these two movies, however, I think I have officially entered a string of good movies yet again. Although “New York I love you” was pretty bad (but again, this was expected), I feel like everything has been incredibly great ever since “Yi Yi”. It makes it even more difficult to choose a new film now because it makes me wonder if it’ll live up to my expectations. There are several possibilities of course: 1. I don’t want a movie for awhile, 2. I always choose movies by directors I know so I’ll have a somewhat clear expectation, 3. I choose movies I have been wanting to see for a long time.

“Laura” is very difficult to compare to these other films, but it was at least as great. For some reason I am not a big fan of Gene Tierney and don’t actually find her to be that, but her acting was good and the character of Laura was a surprisingly likeable one. Unlike every other film noir I’ve seen, Laura is not an evil femme fatale, in fact, she is ‘merely’ a very attractive, strong woman and thus by far the most modern film noir character I have seen. In some ways, she is ‘really’ perfect: Smart and strong-willed yet good-natured and with a healthy love for men. Typically female characters in any sort of fiction are either the one or the other, and you can barely ever find an intellectual and somewhat pure woman who, by the way, also has a love life.

Apart from a very likeable main character, I was surprised how suspenseful the story was. I’m not really sure what to think about Preminger’s directing (I just can’t judge it at all!) but the cinematography definitely oozes of style. So either I really love film noirs or the ones I have seen (“Out of the Past” and “Angel Face”) are just the best ones out there. I hope this is not the case and look forward to seeing more. (What should I watch I wonder? XD)