Whirlpool (1950)

Film: Whirlpool (1950)

Stars: Gene Tierney, Richard Conte, Jose Ferrer, Charles Bickford

Director: Otto Preminger

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

Few film noirs are as storied as Laura, perhaps the greatest film noir of all time if we want to get right down to it.  Both director Otto Preminger and star Gene Tierney would go on to make a name for themselves in the genre.  Preminger would have great success the following year with Fallen Angel (review for it at the bottom of this page), the movie that would make Linda Darnell's career (and end Alice Faye's), while Tierney would go on to become one of the few women nominated for an Academy Award for inhabiting a femme fatale role in Leave Her to Heaven, the most financially successful film that Fox made in the 1940's (again, review at the bottom of this page).  By 1950, though, both of them needed some of that Laura magic back.  Preminger had recently made one of the decade's highest-profile flops, Forever Amber, and while his follow-up Daisy Kenyon (for a third time, review at the bottom of the page) was well-regarded, it wasn't as big of a hit as its Joan Crawford/Henry Fonda double-billing would've implied.  Tierney, meanwhile, was in the middle of her messy, multi-year divorce to fashion designer Oleg Cassini, and had also had a brief (and for Tierney, heartbreaking) affair with a young John F. Kennedy years before his time in the White House.  Actress & director reunited in 1950 for not one but two films, and as I've seen Where the Sidewalk Ends before (no review at bottom of the page, you'll have to rely upon my Letterboxd) I figured it made sense to go with my final missing gap in their combined filmography, Whirlpool.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie honestly has a really cool plot, even if it makes no sense when it's being executed.  We have Ann Sutton (Tierney), the wealthy wife of a famous psychoanalyst named Bill (Conte), who has a bit of a problem with kleptomania, and is nearly arrested until a fellow therapist David Korvo (Ferrer) saves her from embarrassment.  He begins to treat her, without her husband knowing, for her issues with insomnia, but in a hypnotic trance, she shows up in the apartment of a dead woman, one who had been threatening her over an implied infatuation she had with Dr. Korvo.  She, in the trance, confesses to the murder, but Bill, along with a detective (Bickford) start to investigate, with Bill convinced that his wife couldn't have been the killer because people who are hypnotized would only do something they'd do in real life.  It turns out he is right (about her innocence at least) as it's Dr. Korvo who was the real killer, and he perishes in the film's closing scene, bleeding to death while professing Ann's innocence.

Whirlpool would make a decent amount for what it was at the box office, and for both of its stars it did allow something of a jump into the next decade.  This sort of "mousy femme fatale" routine would be a big part of Tierney's career for when she'd work the next decade (offscreen she would have more ill-timed romances, including with Aly Khan, and eventually have a suicide attempt before finally getting better outside of the Hollywood glare), while Preminger would go on to make major movies like The Moon is Blue, Carmen Jones, and Anatomy of a Murder, the latter two winning him Oscar nominations.

But it's not very good.  The movie rarely makes sense, and even when it does, it's far too dry.  Tierney, once such a vibrant onscreen performer, really struggled with her offscreen troubles to not bring that to the theatergoers, and not in an interesting way (that sounds gauche...but it's real).  She's too staid in this, and she's honestly offscreen for far too long.  Conte & Bickford are boring, and Ferrer is a bad over-actor.  The script also makes very little sense (Ferrer's approach to psychiatry reads less like genius and more like a voodoo spell you'd find in a Poverty Row film with Bela Lugosi).  The movie is not good, and a personal love of Tierney is the only thing keeping me from going 1-star on this picture.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Caught, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, The Naked City, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Side Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach, A Woman's Secret

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai