My Otto Preminger noir cycle began with”Where the Sidewalk Ends” (1950) I was going to revisit “Laura” (1944), but instead I got swallowed up by “Whirlpool” (1944) also starring Gene Tierney, this time as Ann Sutton. As much as I liked her performance opposite Dana Andrews, I appreciated her character in “Whirlpool” so much more, because it has a lot of depth, which Tierney handles dramatically well.
Perhaps its flaw is that the film tries very hard to make sense out of all the hypnotism mambo jumbo, in order to make it realistic and believable, as opposed to Preminger’s film of the same year, where Tierney’s character is not believable but you don’t care as much, because the way she’s lit, she’s obviously an angel sent to save Dana Andrews from himself. It feels more like a fairy tale.
Preminger pulls off this realism really well in “Whirlpool”, thanks the outstanding performances of José Ferrer as hypnotist David Korvo and Richard Conte as the sometimes arrogant husband William Sutton. Barbara O’Neil as Theresa Randolph is great too.
Worth revisiting. At that time, I may add more to this modest review.
4.5 stars.
When kleptomaniac housewife Ann Sutton (Gene Tierney) steals a pin from a department store at the beginning of Otto Preminger’s Whirlpool, she couldn’t have anticipated the incident would ultimately get her charged with both adultery and murder. Initially, the mysterious hypnotist David Korvo (Jose Ferrer) persuades the store to let her go, but this begins a weeks-long relationship in which Ann meets him for daily hypnosis treatments, unaware that he plans to involve her in his own criminal intentions. Ann’s shame is further complicated by her perceived need to serve as a happy, dutiful wife to her famed psychiatrist husband William (Richard Conte), perhaps a postwar warning to the forthcoming 1950’s happy homemakers (William advises her to “just stay healthy and adorable”). Compared with Preminger’s superior earlier noirs, Whirlpool is a bit talky and stagey, closer in style to his later Anatomy of a Murder (1959); a few scenes, however, bring out the director’s visual panache, like when Ann trespasses at night in a trance, and David Raksin’s outstanding score features a consistent refrain of anticipation.
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