Whirlpool [1950] DVD

WHIRLPOOL is an intriguing blend of film noir and women's picture, Gene Tierney, the star of Laura, Preminger's first big success, here plays the well-dressed wife of a successful psychoanalyst, played with chilling remoteness by Richard Conte. When arrested for shoplifting, she is saved from inevitable scandal by the intervention of a suave but lightly sinister hypnotist (Jose Ferrer). However, the salvation proves deceptive and she soon finds herself enmeshed in a web of blackmail and murder.
The script is by Ben Hecht, one of Hollywood's most brilliant screenwriters, who according to Hitchcock, was 'in constant touch with prominent psychoanalysts'. Preminger turns the story into an examination of people - and a marriage - under stress, and the conventional ending does little to dispel his somewhat bleak vision. The film may have a noirish theme, but the plot unfolds in a sumptuously photographed world of glossy interiors, luxurious decor and expensive clothes.

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