AaronCapenBanner Otto Preminger directed this fanciful mystery that stars Gene Tierney as happily married Ann Sutton, who is also a kleptomaniac, and in an act of desperation, goes to hypnotist David Korvo(played by Jose Ferrer) to help her overcome her embarrassing compulsion, especially since her husband(played by Richard Conte) is a noted psychiatrist! Unfortunately, Korvo is untrustworthy, and involves Ann in an elaborate murder scheme that she desperately tries to convince both the police and herself that she is innocent of. Though melodramatic, with an unlikely premise, this is still reasonably entertaining, with good cast and direction.

JohnWelles "Whirlpool" (1949), directed by Otto Preminger, the man brought us the classic "Laura" (1944), and stars the luminous Gene Tierney, Richard Conte (who would eventually go on to co-star in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" [1972] as Don Emilio Barzini), the wonderfully world-weary and haggard Charles Bickford and the malicious José Ferrer giving his best. The main fault in this otherwise fine film that benefits from a nice score by the famed David Raksin and attractive cinematography by Arthur C. Miller, is an exceptionally silly plot from the usually reliable Ben Hecht (who was forced to use the pseudonym Lester Barstow because of a blacklist) that has Gene Tierney, a secret kleptomaniac married to world-renowned psychologist Richard Conte, being manipulated by the villainous José Ferrer to unwittingly become the chief suspect in a murder. The resolution is daft and somewhat spoils the effect of the whole film. So while it's not one of Otto Preminger's finest movies, it still has a lot to like, especially an impeccable cast.

jc-osms 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.

moonspinner55 Gene Tierney plays the beautiful but troubled wife of a wealthy psychoanalyst; she's suffering from kleptomania and seeks help from a nefarious hypnotist, who uses her for his own advantage. Otto Preminger-directed drama, from a novel by Guy Endore, has a terminal case of blandness. The well-coiffed picture is smartly-designed, but it is so starched and manicured that even the themes of blackmail and murder fail to cause much alarm. Tierney, her prim face permanently set in a super-serious freeze, has no character to play and falls back on externals; as the villain, Jose Ferrer gets off to a good start (much like the picture) but he quickly becomes monotonous. *1/2 from ****