Nondiegetic Sound and Queer Disembodiment in Laura (1944)

Otto Preminger's noir masterpiece Laura (1944) famously blurs the border between diegetic and nondiegetic music as David Raksin's title theme repeatedly migrates into record players and onscreen combos. Yet Laura further exploits this dichotomy with voice-over and recorded speech, which conspire with the music to create a dualistic sound world across which the film's erotic contests unfold. In precarious control of the nondiegetic space is Waldo Lydecker, one of the numerous queer characters in film noir. Despite much attention to this character in film studies, his sonic portrayal remains largely unexplored. This article argues that the soundtrack of Laura exploits the nondiegetic/diegetic divide to dramatize a dichotomy in Waldo's sexuality. The disembodied realm of the nondiegetic orchestral theme and voice-over corresponds to the purely aesthetic realm in which he seeks to confine his glamorous alter ego; the embodied realm of the diegetic theme represents the real world in which Laura's physical desire (and perhaps his own) arouses a murderous rage. While Waldo first commands the musical narration in a manner unparalleled by any other queer character, diegetic incursions of the title theme steadily erode his narrative control. As Laura appears in the flesh midway through the film, the orchestra and title theme abandon Waldo's voice-over and begin to function as conventional underscore for the heterosexual couple, confirming his impotence over a sexual order he can neither join nor control. I end by suggesting that Laura performs a remarkable deconstruction of queer representation in classic Hollywood cinema.