Preminger's fluid, probing style privileges us, the audience, with unearthing the corrosive layer beneath the sublime surface. In this case it is that of the New York art world. Laura is a true whodunit in which character is a mystery and just what has been done becomes the question. Clifton Webb sets the tone of duplicity as the outwardly cynical, inwardly hysterical columnist Waldo Lydecker, whose protegée, Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney), has been murdered. The cop on the case (Dana Andrews) can boast of the only consistent nature in the film: consistently bitter, consistently noir. An empty vessel, he becomes filled with the haunting image of Laura's portrait and falls in love for the first time-with a dead woman. As Laura, Gene Tierney is at once ethereal and cunning, like cinema itself, a dream not to be believed.