
Originally Posted by
David Giancarlo
I don't understand this. While Clifton Webb is very funny and entertaining in Laura, this is actually a really BAD performance, because he is so miscast: he characterizes Waldo as a flaming homosexual, thus, completely failing to express his all-consuming, violent lust for Laura, which is a pivotal plot point and motivation in the film. Some of it is not his fault: the screenplay gives him bitchy dialogue, has him fawning over Dana Andrews's "lean, muscular body", and even sets up his entrance and meeting with Dana Andrews with Waldo emerging naked from a hottub. It just doesn't work at all to express Waldo's sorrow over habitual rejection from Laura, and jealousy over seeing her with other men George Sanders in All about Eve is like the 10x better similar performance because, while he characterizes Addison DeWitt as a gay man, Addison DeWitt isn't supposed to be a straight man in lust with a woman. When he tells Eve that she belongs to him, it works because it isn't motivated by romantic/erotic lust: it is motivated by power. Laura is a rare example of a film that I find to be almost perfect, and is then nearly torpedoed by a performance that took me out of the film.