Whirlpool is the noir thriller of Otto Preminger , released in 1949. The film’s script is based on the 1946 novel “It seems to me Lady” ( English by Methinks the Lady ) by the American writer Guy Endor , who is best known for the horror novel “The Werewolf in Paris” (1933).
| Whirlpool | |
|---|---|
| Whirlpool | |
 | |
| Genre | thriller noir |
| Producer | Otto Preminger |
| Producer | Otto Preminger |
| Author script | Ben heckt Andrew Salt Guy Endor (novel) |
| In the main cast | Gene Tierney Richard Conte |
| Operator | Arthur C. Miller |
| Composer | David Raxin |
| Film company | 20th Century Fox |
| Duration | 98 min |
| A country |  USA |
| Tongue | English |
| Year | 1949 |
| IMDb | ID 0042039 |
Content
Filmmakers and Leaders
Director Otto Preminger is one of the most recognized masters of the film noir heat, he has staged such significant films as Laura (1944, Oscar nomination for Best Director), Fallen Angel (1945) and Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950 ), as well as the judicial drama " Anatomy of Murder " (1959), which earned him an Oscar nomination for best film [1] .
Scriptwriter Ben Hekt was one of Hollywood's leading screenwriters of the 1930s and 1950s. Officially, Hekt was the screenwriter of the films “ Vertigo ” (1945), “ Notoriety ” (1946, Oscar nomination), the film Noir “ Kiss of Death ” (1947) by Henry Hathaway and “ Where the Sidewalk Ends ” (1950) by Preminger . Unofficially, Hekt participated in scripts of such recognized films as Scarface (1932), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Gone with the Wind (1939), Guild (1946) and Rope ( 1948) [2] .
Gene Tierney starred in two other noirs of Preminger - Laura (1944) and Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), and in 1946 she was nominated for an Oscar for her main female role in the film “ God Judge Her ” ( 1945). Richard Conte has played in many noir films, the most significant of which are “ Call Northside 777 ” (1948), “ Crying of the Big City ” (1948), “ Thieves Highway ” (1949), “ House of Strangers ” (1949), “ Blue Gardenia” "(1953) and" Grand Ensemble "(1955).
Story
In Los Angeles, at the exit of a large department store, a guard detains a beautiful young woman by finding expensive jewelry stolen from a store in her purse. During the trial, it turns out that the woman's name is Ann Sutton ( Gene Tierney ), and she is the wife of the famous psychoanalyst Bill Sutton ( Richard Conte ). During the interrogation of Anne, someone comes into the store’s office, David Corvo ( Jose Ferrer ), who quickly convinces the manager that it would be more profitable for the store to let Ann go and not cause a scandal around the abduction. Upon returning home, Ann wants to tell her husband what happened, but then changes her mind.
The next day, Corvo calls Anne and invites her to a restaurant. Believing that Corvo is an ordinary blackmailer, she writes him a check for five thousand dollars. However, Corvo refuses the money and breaks the check, then gives her the original incident report, compiled by the department store security. He also invites Anne to the party a few days later.
At a gorgeous party, Corvo shows Ann his psychiatric abilities, and claims that Anne is sick with kleptomania caused by constant psychological pressure on her. When Ann confesses that she suffers from insomnia, Corvo convinces her that he can help her and secretly hypnotizes her. At the party, Ann meets Teresa Randolph (Barbara O'Neill), a patient of her husband and ex-girlfriend of Corvo. Teresa warns Anne that Corvo is hunting for her money, but Anne abruptly interrupts her, believing that Teresa is trying to avenge Corvo for abandoning her.
After Anne regains sleep, she gratefully agrees to come to the next meeting with Corvo, but refuses to meet in his hotel room, insisting on meeting at the bar. While Ann leaves the bar to call Theresa with the intention of apologizing to her, Corvo steals her neckerchief and a glass with her fingerprints. Returning to the bar, Ann agrees to meet Corvo daily as a patient.
A few days later, when Bill leaves for a scientific conference in San Francisco, Anne, in a state of hypnosis, takes out Teresa’s records of psychotherapeutic sessions from her husband’s safe, leaves the house, drives to Teresa’s house in a car, gets into the house and hides the plates in the pantry. At this time, the alarm goes off, and soon the security service arrives, which catches Anne sitting on the sofa next to Theresa's body, strangled by her handkerchief. Anne cannot remember anything and cannot explain her actions in any way, and Lieutenant James Colton ( Charles Bickford ) concludes that Anne is Corvo's mistress and killed Teresa out of jealousy.
Bill urgently returns to Los Angeles, hoping to independently understand the situation. Upon learning that the police found in Corvo's apartment a glass with her fingerprints, about Ann’s conflict with Theresa, and about meetings with Corvo, she begins to doubt Ann's marital fidelity, although she is convinced that she could not become a killer. Bill recalls that at the therapy sessions, Teresa claimed that Corvo fraudulently forced her to give her the inheritance of her daughter in the amount of 50 thousand dollars, and that she intended to report it to the police. Bill suspects that Corvo could have killed Theresa for fear of being exposed.
However, Colton soon finds out that Corvo is in the hospital after a spleen surgery that was performed on the very day of the murder. However, Bill invites Colton to listen to Teresa's recordings of the sessions, however, it appears that they have disappeared. Bill once again talks to Ann, and she finally confesses that she suffers from kleptomania, caused by her father’s ban on her own money, and then the control of money that Bill led. Bill understands that Anne fell into a psychological dependence on Corvo, and did certain things in a hypnotic state. He tells Colton about this, hypothesizing that Corvo could hypnotize himself in order to get up right after the operation, come to Theresa's house and kill her. Such a version seems unbelievable to Colton, nevertheless, out of compassion for Bill, he agrees to deliver Anne to Theresa's house so that she can recreate on the spot what happened on the day of the murder.
Meanwhile, Corvo learns from radio news that the police are looking for recordings of Bill's sessions that point to the killer. He mesmerizes himself to get to Theresa's house and destroy these records. Having found the records, he listens to them and at that moment he hears that Colton, Bill and Ann enter the house, and hides behind the curtain. Ann finally recalls that she hid the records in the pantry, Bill and Colton go to check it, but find nothing. During their absence, Corvo leaves his hiding place and, threatening Ann with murder, demands that she say that the records are hidden in the bedroom on the second floor. Corvo expects to quietly escape from home together while they search for records above. Frightened, Anne begins to tell Bill and Colton that the records are upstairs, but then decides to tell the truth. Seeing this, Corvo leaves the shelter and, threatening with a weapon, tries to escape. But on the stairs, he begins internal bleeding, Corvo loses consciousness, falls from the stairs and dies in place.
Colton calls an ambulance, while Bill and Ann hug each other.
Cast
- Gene Tierney - Anne Sutton
- Richard Conte - Dr. William Sutton
- Jose Ferrer - David Corvo
- Charles Bickford - Lieutenant Colton
- Barbara O'Neill - Teresa Randolph
- Edward Franz - Martin Avery
- Constance Collier - Tina Cosgrove
- Fortunio Bonanova - Ferruccio di Ravallo
Evaluation of criticism
After the release of the film on the screens, the magazine “ Variety ” wrote:
| "Whirlpool" is a very entertaining and exciting melodrama that plays around the properties of hypnosis. Ben Hekt and Andrew Salt tightly twisted the script on the effect of hypnosis on the subconscious, and together with Otto Preminger as a director, circumvented all those fake moments that could easily reduce this picture to another scary melodrama. Their main focus is the young wife of a recognized psychiatrist who has been suffering from kleptomania since adolescence. Gene Tierney in the role of a young wife gives a completely convincing game, although at times she fails to show the magical power that a woman should have in a trance state. Richard Conte in the role of her husband looks a little out of place here. The best among the actors was Jose Ferrer as a vile hypnotist [3] |
. Bosley Crowther wrote immediately in the New York Times immediately after the film was released:
| No one doubts that people under hypnosis do strange things, and that the hypnosis technique can be used for evil. But based on a rational view of things, it’s impossible even for a minute to believe in the hocus-pocus that the film “Whirlpool” demonstrates. The topic of sloppy police work, which was introduced to give this detective horror strength, does not help either. In short, no one succumbs to this obvious attempt to throw dust in the eyes of an unsuspecting public with a completely contrived story, despite the high level of production and excellent actors. And in conclusion of the indictment, we can add that the action is so slow and so overloaded with standard horrors that it could not capture, even if it had any meaning ... "The plot of the film is full of incredible events that are hard to believe. Firstly , "A lady in a trance state walks around the city, drives a car and breaks into houses. Even more unbelievable is the claim that the charlatan was able to commit a murder in a state of self-hypnosis immediately after the operation to remove his gallbladder. This plot twist became a cold shower, washing away the slightest remaining confidence in history. And yet, this absurdity, written by Ben Hekt and Andrew Salt based on the novel by Guy Endor , is beautifully made and played by actors, among which stands out Jose Ferrer . Mr. Ferrer, the star of Broadway, in the role of an elegant and insightful villain, voices Hect's elegant texts with a stinging relish and burns those around him with his own eyes. Gene Tierney plays an arrogant lady who has gone astray a bit, while Charles Bickford and Richard Conte , a detective and a husband, respectively. They work hard to enchant the viewer, but all their efforts remain cold and unnatural. Watching this movie is better in a state of trance ” [4] |
. Time Out magazine wrote about the film:
| The theme and cold style of “ Laura ” and “ Angelic Face ” are used in this story about the rich and advanced, whose lives are bursting at the seams under the pressure of psychological disorders, suppressed passion and innocent credulity ... Preminger turns this rather strange story into a balanced and sober study of people under stress. As the crime is investigated, streams of mistrust, fear, and lies add concern to the calm waters of an apparently happy marriage. With the goal of observing rather than teaching, he creates a world of pretty characters with flaws. A great exception among them is the charlatan, schemer and caster performed by Ferrer , which makes one believe in the authenticity of evil. The noir theme in cold interiors perfectly characterizes Preminger's style, which in this case was able to turn a routine melodrama into something more individual, strong and deep ” [5] |
. Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote in the Chicago Reader in 1985:
| This unusual thriller of 1949 by Otto Preminger about a kleptomaniac ( Gene Tierney ), who fell under the control of a hypnotist similar to Mabuse ( Jose Ferrer ), did not achieve much recognition in America, and the acting (including Richard Conte as the psychiatrist's husband Tierney ) and the outdated sentimental scene make it clear why this happened. But the French enthusiasm for this gloomy and terrible melodrama, generated mainly by Jacques Rivette and Jean-Luc Godard , cannot be called unreasonable: Preminger 's ambiguous attitude to his characters and his sense of moral relativism were rarely so memorable ” [6] |
.
Notes
- ↑ Otto Preminger - Filmography by rating
- ↑ Ben Hecht (I) - Filmography by rating
- ↑ Whirlpool | Variety
- ↑ Movie Review - Whirlpool - THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; Incredible Goings-On Featare 'Whirlpool,' Mystery-Horror Picture Showing at Roxy - NYTimes.com
- ↑ Whirlpool | review, synopsis, book tickets, showtimes, movie release date | Time out london
- ↑ Whirlpool | Chicago reader
Links
- Whirlpool on the Internet Movie Database
- Whirlpool (English) on allmovie
- Whirlpool on the Rotten Tomatoes website
- Whirlpool at Turner Classic Movies
- "Whirlpool" trailer on YouTube