What a beautiful movie!

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Absolutely Fantastic

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Turgid screenplay that starts off well, but gets more obscure as the plot develops. Clearly director Preminger is hoping to repeat the allure of Laura (1944), but lacks the coherent story material. There's a lot of what critics call pscho-babble in the dialogue, which would be okay if the story gelled better. The one good part is the little mystery surrounding who killed Mrs. Randolph. Under the circumstances, there's no obvious culprit. Unfortunately, the rest of the story has Ann (Tierney) bouncing between two psychologists, the arrogant Korvo (Ferrer) and her husband (Conte) who's trying to help her overcome her kleptomania.Maybe I've seen too many gangster movies of the time, but tough guy Conte appears miscast as a highly educated professional. At the same time, Ferrer as the dislikable Korvo manages to load his elevated vocabulary with an obnoxious amount of cultivated sarcasm. And, of course, there's the gorgeous Tierney pretty much putting on the same mask she wore in Laura. All in all, the movie slows down too much of the time, given Preminger's penchant for lengthy scenes along with the turgid script. Good thing the always reliable Charles Bickford is along to provide some spark. Still, the movie amounts to a disappointment given the big studio (TCF) pedigree.

First, David Korvo (played exquisitely by Joes Ferrer) is one of the most demented, manipulative, scandalously amoral cads to ever grace the screen. The movie is worth watching for him alone. Second, Gene Tierney (playing Anne Sutton) is so painfully lovely and vulnerable, the movie is worth watching for her alone. Do the math.Anne Sutton is the bored wife of a fabulously successful and rock-jawed psychoanalyst (luckily for her, his knowledge proves useful). She is one of those tragic kelptomaniacs with daddy issues (the field of psychology has advanced greatly in 60 years) who falls under the sway of Svengali-esque David Korvo, a truly despicable astrologist, mentalist and woman-beating, trust-fund draining con man. Ferrer has such a subtle, contained performance, conveying his evil intent with a half-hearted gesture or a dropped consonant or a lazy look of his eye — how can you not pull for him? Of course, he uses his considerable bag of tricks to draw poor Anne into his web of deceits and ultimately frames her for a murder (don't worry, it's 1949, there's no blood).Will her controlling and distant husband believe her? Will she let him believe her? And what of Korvo, apparently confined to bed after a surgery, could he actually be innocent? And can someone actually hypnotize themselves? Only grizzled police detective Colton, recently widowed and still grieving, can get to the bottom of it. This is a moody thriller with deep emotional undercurrents that pairs well with a rainy Sunday afternoon and a martini, especially if it's served in one of those old fashioned glasses that look more like champagne saucers.-- www.cowboyandvampire.com --

Film Noir to me is dark, with evil deeds and especially unhappy endings. This was before I began thinking about it and determined that noir is more a type of film making rather than film content. A film like "Double Indemnity is noir even tho we do have some happy in the ending (the daughter and boyfriend reconcile). Sunset Boulevard has Norma so bonkers she thinks things are happy and so they are. So, this noir is a happy noir. Gene Tierny is hypnotized by Jose Ferrer and he makes her do things to help him murder a former sucker who turned on him. Jose is so good at hypnosis he even google-eyes himself after gall bladder surgery so he can get about knocking off people and listening to records. Gene's husband is a shrink himself, but legitimate and somehow he connives that Jose is not on the level. He believes her, then he doesn't, she's nuts, she's not, oh dear, what to do, what to do. Cut to murder scene and Jose hiding in the wings with a guy he finally Jose tries to get Gene to cover for him while hubby and a cop are searching a closet. Failure and good wills out, happiness and joy, cut. This movie is so contrived, I wanted to hypnotize myself in to shutting it off but stayed to course to see how lousy a top notch cast/production could screw up. Pretty bad.

Ann Sutton (Gene Tierney) is married to Dr. Bill Sutton, an upright psychoanalyst (played by a completely miscast Richard Conte). When we first meet Ann, she's getting arrested by a store detective in a department store after attempting to steal an expensive piece of jewelry. Okay, so that's a bit of a twist—our heroine is a kleptomaniac. Next into the mix is the oily David Korvo (nicely and seedily played by Jose Ferrer). He knows the department store owner and convinces him to drop the charges against Ann.Korvo is 1949's answer to a new age practitioner: he dabbles in astrology but is principally a hypnotist. At first Ann believes Korvo is trying to blackmail her but he persuades her that he really wants to be her 'therapist'. Ann is smart enough to realize that Korvo is trying to get her to come up to his hotel room so they can have sex so she meets him downstairs in the hotel lobby. Korvo gives up on the sex idea but has more sinister plans. At first, he charges $50 for hypnotism sessions which appear to be helping Ann with her insomnia.We learn more about Korvo from one of Bill Sutton's patients, Theresa Randolph, who tries to warn Ann that Korvo is a blackmailer and up to no good but Ann believes that Theresa is merely jealous of her relationship with this extremely crafty Svengali (apparently Bill adheres to a strict code of doctor-patient confidentiality as Ann has never met Theresa Randolph before). Bill records his therapy sessions on new-fangled long playing records which he stores in a closet in his home. Everything about Korvo's 'modus operandi' (his penchant for blackmail and physical abuse) are detailed in these recordings and Korvo realizes that he has to get his hands on them if he is to continue in his career as a con artist.So what does Korvo do? He murders Randolph (just as she's about to change her will negating a bequest that leaves Korvo a large amount of money as part of her estate). He also hypnotizes Ann and has her steal the Randolph therapy session recordings and puts them in a closet in Randolph's house. He sets Ann up by leaving a glass with Ann's fingerprint on it in Randolph's home. The police arrive and arrest Ann for murder.Now it gets strange, real strange! Korvo needs an alibi. Apparently he's been having gall bladder problems so he arranges to have an operation at two in the afternoon on the day of the murder. The murder occurs at nine in the evening so how does Korvo pull it off? Well we find out (quite improbably) that Korvo hypnotized himself and was able to drag himself out of bed and commit the murder.The hypnotist's power of suggestion has a prominent role in this film but unfortunately much too prominent. I always believed that hypnotism might be a useful tool in helping people overcome minor health or psychological problems (such as Ann being helped with her insomnia at the beginning of the film). But I didn't buy it for a minute when Korvo orders Ann around in a trance and then hypnotizes himself hours after major surgery. And then Korvo does it again—he hypnotizes himself once more so he can leave the hospital and try and get his hands on the recordings. But instead of taking the recordings and getting out of the deceased Randolph's house right away (or even destroying them at the house), he tarries and begins playing them on the phonograph in the living room. This gives the Suttons and the investigating detective enough time to arrive at the crime scene where they eventually confront Korvo, who drops dead from blood loss (apparently his hypnotic suggestions are not powerful enough to stanch the bleeding—complications from his surgery earlier that afternoon).Aside from the obvious plot holes, there is also a distasteful conceit being peddled by the film's screenwriters here. The dubious and subjective 'profession' of psychoanalysis not only is depicted as being highly 'scientific' but is also placed on par with practitioners in the medical profession. 'Unscientific', unlicensed 'healers' (represented by the evil Korvo) are presented as bogus and manipulative in striking contrast to the upright Dr. Sutton (who uses his psychobabble) to uncover the ROOT of his wife's kleptomania. With some kind soothing words, Dr. Sutton will soon solve his wife's neurosis and they can once again move amongst their social equals and bring good cheer to them without the fear of scandal.If you see this on DVD, there's some interesting commentary by film critic Richard Shickel. He notes that the late film critic, Pauline Kael, termed this film "a real stinker". But Schikel is more on the side of critic Andrew Sarris who felt there were a lot of worthwhile things about the film. While Tierney and Ferrer's performances draw you in, the plot holes and the psychobabble are enough to keep one from taking the DVD off the shelf and watching it every couple of months. I'm not sure if 'Whirlpool' deserves to be called a 'real stinker' but it's decidedly no great work of art!