Whirlpool [1949] [DVD]

Not one of Preminger's best but streets ahead of most other Directors convoluted plot helped along by a (nearly) top notch cast i.e. the gorgeous Gene Tierney the underrated Richard Conte reliable Charles Pickfordand anyone who can get a half decent performance out of old wood face Josie Ferrer gets my vote!(how on earth did he get an Oscar?) not a great movie but miles in front of today's foul mouthed sex and violence porn

I am certain this is an excellent, entertaining film, given the people involved in its making. However, I received a defective disc. Only the main menu plays and nothing beyond that. So, I have given it three stars, but not for content, obviously. Have not contacted seller as yet, so cannot comment as to seller's helpfulness, etc. Item arrived in a timely fashion.

Whirlpool grips, entertains and forces you to confront the female stereotype. It is sumptious, intellectual and well crafted visually. It's weakness is the confusing depiction of women, as victims and objects. Clearly of its era it is nebertheless a thing of beauty.

Beautiful Gene Tierney is terrific in this film! If you are a fan of hers you will not be disappointed. Richard Conte is a surprising choice to play a her doctor husband but the film is well-acted and directed and she looks gorgeous!! Highly recommended.

excellent

good film

Great Film Noir..

"Whirlpool" is the story of how a Psychiatrist's wife (Gene Tierney) is blackmailed by a Svengali-like figure (Jose Ferrer) and then framed for the murder of one of his old blackmail victims.I'm a great fan of Film Noir and, never having seen this one before, had high hopes of its potential (it's part of the four-film box set "Film Noir Classics", issued by BFI and accompanied by "Fallen Angel", "Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "Night and the City"). It's a bit of a curate's egg. The bad part (though "bad " is perhaps too strong a word - perhaps weaker aspect is a more appropriate description) is the casting of Gene Tierney as a psychologically vulnerable and easily-manipulated woman. Tierney excelled at playing remote and enigmatic Ice Queens - playing a normal, flawed woman was never her strong suit (q.v. "The Shanghai Gesture"), and her hysterical outbursts of womanly weakness never convince. Even worse is the wildly inappropriate casting of Richard Conte as her husband, the psychiatrist. Conte was great playing a Hood from the Lower East Side, but not much cop at anything else. As a psychiatrist, he's simply hopeless.The Good news is Jose Ferrer as the oleaginous, sinister mountebank who wheedles a living as a hypnotist-cum-gigolo, conning money out of rich, lonely women. I'd always wondered quite how Ferrer ever got cast as anything; with his rubbery face and his total lack of character-shading or subtlety, he seemed to me to be the person least likely to make it past an audition for anything (see him in "The Cockleshell Heroes" and that film where he played Alfred Dreyfus as examples of what I mean). However, here he is totally magnificent, oozing menace and dark charm like sebaceous fluid. It's his performance, combined with a masterfully clever plot, a script by Ben Hecht and the presence of Charles Bickford as the grizzled detective who finally works it all out, which salvages this film from a comical disaster into a highly watchable Noir. I was impressed. I hope you'll be too.