The Eyes of Laura Mars
An American Take on Italian Giallo Never Finds Its Focus
Outside of a Brian DePalma movie, few American films showcase the critical ingredients of a giallo quite as overtly as The Eyes of Laura Mars. Not a very good giallo, mind you, but a giallo nevertheless. Most of the elements are there. It's set in the world of fashion and photography. There's a series of violent murders. There's a cast of thinly-drawn, mostly unlikable characters. There's an actor known for playing twitchy psychopaths. People rarely react to a situation with anything resembling how actual humans would react. The cops are present but pretty much useless. That's about as giallo a list of ingredients as one could hope for, but the final dish is bland. Much is made about the script being by John Carpenter, but Carpenter himself will tell you little of his work-for-hire screenplay made it into the final draft, which was substantially rewritten.
Faye Dunaway stars as Laura Mars, a fashion photographer who has branched out into art photography, leveraging her models to stage blood-splatter Grand Guignol tableaus. When people in her orbit start turning up murdered, she discovers that the visions of death she's been having are not dreams, but are in fact premonitions—psychic sight. She is seeing through the killer's eyes. The lead investigator on the case, John Neville (Tommy Lee Jones), is initially incredulous regarding Laura's claim, but as the two navigate the growing body count and a budding romance, he starts to rethink his skepticism. Slowly, but surely, the list of suspects becomes a list of victims, until the mysterious killer sets his eyes—and Laura's eyes—on Laura.
The style in giallo is often overstated in articles and retro imitations, but they're still usually pretty stylish, both in terms of direction and the attire of the characters. By contrast, Eyes has listless direction from Irving Kirshner, an able journeyman for hire with no particular style. While that works in certain types of film (he would go on to direct The Empire Strikes Back, a movie that was not at all about who was directing it), giallo calls for a dynamic, even crackpot visual flare he simply cannot deliver. Style is the very heart of a good giallo, and while it isn't always the only thing, it at least should be a thing.
The performances from a good cast (which, aside from Dunaway and Jones includes Raul Julia, Brad Douriff, and Rene Auberjonois) are awkward, but not in a way that works or creates the sort of uncanny weirdness for which one would hope. The color palette is dull and muddy and beige. There's no color, no pop. For a film set in the world of fashion photography, the outfits are, with the exception of a couple of outlandish photo shoots, uninteresting, unsexy, and oddly school marmish in that way the less exciting backwaters of 1970s fashion could be. Zero glamour, and it's not because the film wants to subvert the flash of fashion. It's sleazy in a pedestrian sort of way, but for a violent murder movie shot on location in 1970s New York, it fails to achieve a satisfying sordidness.
The supernatural aspect places the film alongside Italian contemporaries such as Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971), All the Colors of the Dark (1972), and the very giallo American production Don't Look Now (1973), which nails the appeal of early 1970s giallo with greater success. Each of those films succeeds in myriad ways Eyes does not, and even when the supernatural element is no better explained, it still works better, is realized better, and in a way that more effectively heightens tension and strangeness. Eyes' psychic sight falls as flat as everything else.
Only future Star Trek: Deep Space Nine star Rene Auberjonois performs with the over-the-top gusto of someone who knows what the film needs. He would fit in just fine in an Italian production. Alas, the strength of his performance also spotlights how bad everyone else is. Faye Dunaway delivers a lot of awkward screaming that sounds more like whining. As a shaggy-haired homicide cop, Tommy Lee Jones gives Laura no reason to fall in love with him, but improbably and predictably they do anyway despite a stunning lack of chemistry. Brad Douriff is on hand so anyone familiar with Brad Douriff can go, "oh, there's suspect number one." It's a bit like putting Klaus Kinski in your film. He's the only one with the potential to match Auberjonois, but his role is limited and he's never given permission to break out the crazy the way he should. No one gives a lazy performance, mind you. They're all definitely trying and making choices. They just happen to be the wrong ones.
Throughout the movie, I was asking myself, "Why do I care about any of this?" And then I realized that I don't.
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