Whirlpool

An interesting and divisive film noir thriller directed by Otto Preminger and written by Ben Hecht (under the blacklist pseudonym Lester Barstow) and Andrew Solt. Adapted from the novel "Methinks the Lady" written by Guy Endore, the film Stars Gene Tierney, Richard Conte, José Ferrer, and Charles Bickford. Arthur C. Miller is the cinematographer and David Raksin, under the watchful eye of Alfred Newman, provides the music.

The plot sees Ann Sutton (Tierney), the wife of a successful psychoanalyst (Conte), arrested for shoplifting since she has some kleptomania issues. Just when it seems Ann is about to be thrust into a world of scandal, she is saved by smooth-talking hypnotist called David Korvo (Ferrer). Korvo, however, is not what he seems to be, and Ann soon finds herself involved in blackmail and murder and her marriage on the brink of collapse. Confused and emotionally torn, Ann is unsure whether or not she has committed a crime. It looks bleak unless her husband or the police can get to the bottom of the murky mystery.

Combining a psychological thriller core with overt melodramatics, Whirlpool has still to convince many of the film noir hoards as to its worth. Some critics find the concept of the story silly and hard to take, whilst others have gone a step further to suggest that Preminger and Hecht have merely remade Hitchcock's Gregory Peck starrer Spellbound (Hecht on screenplay duties there too) from four years earlier. Either way, and putting a noirish sheen on a Hitchcock movie is no bad thing by the way, Preminger's movie is a compelling little piece of cinema. The central theme of hypnosis as a weapon gives the film a dark edge and Preminger nicely portrays a world containing sympathetically flawed characters. While in the form of Ferrer's oily slick Korvo, film noir gets a most intriguing Mabuse/Freudian like villain of high entertainment value.

Tierney doesn't have to do much here, asked to portray confusion and a almost constant state of hypnotism, she delivers well enough whilst always remaining innocently sexy. Conte's woodenness as the husband oddly benefits the story, while also worthy of a mention is the ever watchable Charles Bickford as Lt. Colton, a thinking man's copper, Bickford keeps it serious as the daftness of the plot threatens to submerge and unhinge the drama.

Frowned upon by big hitting American critics, the film found support from notable Frenchies Rivette and Godard. It seems that like myself, they also liked the quirky and creepy nature of the beast. 7/10

A woman is taken terrible advantage of by a hypnotist in "Whirlpool," a 1949 film starring Gene Tierney, Jose Ferrer, and Richard Conte, directed by Otto Preminger. Tierney is the wife of a successful psychiatrist who is caught shoplifting. She is helped by Ferrer, a hypnotist who steps in during her interrogation. He works with her to help her solve some of her problems, but he adds some other hypnosis as well.

This isn't a great Preminger. The acting is good, but the script is weak. First of all, is it really possible to hypnotize someone that completely? I don't know. What I do know is that it's absolutely against all ethics to talk about a patient with anyone as freely as Conte does. Since a good deal of the plot hinges on his breaking of that doctor-patient privilege, the story doesn't hold up.

Gene Tierney is her usual beautiful self. This is not, however, a role that plays to her strengths as an actress. She's sympathetic but doesn't explore the range of the role enough. She more easily played an icy or feisty type. In those days, as actresses neared 30, studios became less interested, and Tierney found herself in roles which she was not particularly right for - or that wasted her talent just to fulfill her contractual obligations. Ferrer is excellent as the oily hypnotist, keeping his voice even when he was saying the most outrageous things. Conte is very good as well as Tierney's husband.

All in all, this was interesting to watch, but it could have been much better given the talent behind and before the camera.

Movies were meant to entertain, and not all movies can be a "Citizen Kane" but this movie does what it's meant to do. Gene Tierney, perhaps the most beautiful actress ever to grace the screen, and highly under rated, handles the task of playing the fragile, accused murderess in the movie. An odd choice but Jose F. does a great job too...his hospital scene still makes me wince when he gets up from his bed! Barbara O'Neil (aka, Scarlet's mother) pops up in the most unlikeliest of places, but I have a new appreciation for her work. She adds style and elegance to every movie she appears in, including this one as the murdered socialite. Sure the movie might have some flaws, but if you listen carefully everything can be explained. It's great viewing time and again.

Another complex, at times morally ambiguous film noir from Otto Preminger, engaging the services of top writer Ben Hecht and actors of the quality of Gene Tierney & Jose Ferrer to give it life. It's old ground of course for all of them, Preminger and Tierney had teamed up in "Laura" and, with Hecht were to do so again in the soon-come "Where the Sidewalk Ends" while Hecht had previously turned psychoanalysis to thrilling effect in Hitchcock's "Spellbound". There are certainly some typically subversive little Preminger / Hecht touches, I detect, of voyeurism and fetishism, running the film close, I would imagine, to the prevailing moral code of the day, which the former was to take on further in "The Moon Is Blue" and to some kind of apogee in "Anatomy Of A Murder" 10 years later. Look and listen closely here and you'll see the camera fading out a shot of Tierney's husband just about to disrobe his wife after she falls into a hypnotically induced deep-sleep and at another point the salacious quote addressed to Tierney by morally corrupt blackmailing hypnotist/astrologist (what a CV!) Ferrer about "undressing her scruples". I was even pulled up by the scenes of the blood-marks on the floor from Ferrer's character as something you didn't see everyday in the sanitised, Hollywood still coming to terms with the Communist witch-hunt in the post-war era. The playing is excellent, Tierney, who I've only just discovered as an actress (largely through watching old film-noirs!) is again radiantly beautiful as the ashamed kleptomaniac, desperate for a cure, but at the same time conveying her character's complexity and inner toughness as she finally breaks the hypnotic spell cast on her by Ferrer. For me, Ferrer steals the movie, making your skin crawl in every scene he plays once his perverted (in every sense of the word) designs become apparent. Their scenes together, where he can hardly conceal his lust for Tierney and desire to break up her happy home are electric and he also gets a lengthy scene where he hypnotises himself against the excruciating after-effects of his self-conducted gall-bladder operation. He completely convinces you of his strength of will over his physical pain to enable him to go after Tierney as she struggles to recover her amnesia which will of course expose his own guilt. The direction is taut, the cinematography excellent, the settings convincing and I also especially appreciated the excellent use of music to dramatise key scenes. Naturally there's a large degree of implausibility about just how Tierney finds herself under the control of such a toxic character and the denouement is perhaps more complicated and played out than it might be but this is still a highly intelligent, challenging piece of cinema, further pushing back the barriers of adult cinema in late 40's Hollywood.

Part psychological drama, part film-noir. The beautiful wife of the famous psychoanalyst Dr. William Sutton, gets caught stealing an expensive pin from a department store. The infamous astrologer David Korvo comes to her aide but for a price. Through hypnosis, Mrs. Ann Sutton will unconsciously become a party to an elaborate scheme involving murder. What's most interesting about this film is the relationship between psychology and astrology. Are they both pseudo-sciences? Psychological tricksters preying on the weaknesses inherent in the human psyche? Mrs. Sutton suffers from the condition Kleptomania, but is caught between the patriarchal righteousness of her husband, "Stay as you are, as you've always been - healthy and adorable" and the cold cynicism of Mr. Korvo, "A successful marriage is usually based on what a husband and wife don't know about each other." Both Dr. Sutton and Mr. Korvo are bright guys adept at exploiting human weakness in others (especially Ann's), but both fall prey to a shared weakness: wounded vanity. An interesting film that is well worth watching. Jose Ferrer as Korvo is a standout but Gene Tierney seems to have lost her fire and ends up sleepwalking through the film, even when she is not hypnotized.