Tue 29 Oct 2019
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: WHIRLPOOL (1949).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[3] Comments
WHIRLPOOL. 20th Century Fox, 1949. Gene Tierney, Richard Conte, Jose Ferrer, Charles Bickford, Barbara O’Neil, Eduard Franz, Constance Collier. Screenplay by Ben Hecht and Andrew Solt, based on the novel Methinks the Lady by Guy Endore (Duell Sloan & Pearce, 1945).
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Methinks the Lady was filmed in 1949 as Whirlpool, with a screenplay by Ben Hecht, produced and directed by Otto Preminger as yet another attempt to cash in on the success of Laura (1945), Obce again we get Gene Tierney as the innocent re-shaped by a loquacious Svengali — in this case Jose Ferrar as a quack doctor — and implicated in murder.
But where Endore’s novel was a Mystery (and so was Laura) we know from the outset that Ferrar is up to something, and we catch on very quickly that he means to frame Gene Tierney for murder. The suspense is in figuring out just how he means to get away with it, and seeing how Tierney will slip out of the web … or if she will…
Writer Ben Hecht thus turns the book completely inside-out, and he does it to good effect, with neatly-drawn characters and mounting suspense building to an ending that’s plaindamn silly but still lots of fun. Preminger’s direction is elegant as ever, and as for the acting…
Well, Gene Tierney is surprisingly effective in the more emotional stretches, and there’s Ricard Conte, a strong actor too often wasted in bland parts, here wasted in a bland part. But the show really belongs to Jose Ferrar as the talkative quack, and he makes the story the slimy most of it, exuding an unpleasantness that seems compelling at times without ever engaging audience sympathy. Which I think just the effect they were trying for.
October 29th, 2019 at 7:44 pm
It’s probably the better movie for this approach though I would still like to see the Endore novel done straight. Ferrer is the best of the film though everyone is good in it, even the wasted Conte.
It pales compared to LAURA, which it was inevitably compared to, but it’s an entertaining outing on its own well worth catching for Ferrer.
October 29th, 2019 at 10:21 pm
I found a review of whirlpool that I wrote for one of my old blogs:
I had to smile at the opening scenes of Otto Preminger’s 1949 film noir Whirlpool, which reveal socialite Gene Tierney as a kleptomaniac. Because, let’s see, in recent months I’ve watched Tierney as a “dead woman” (Laura), a neurotic widow in love with a ghost (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir), a gambling addict and alcoholic (The Shanghai Gesture), and the coldest homicidal lunatic bitch of, perhaps, all time (Leave Her to Heaven). Kleptomania, and, later in Whirlpool, suggestability at the hands of an unsavory hypnotist, are pretty mild in the overall Gene Tierney scheme of things.
Will it surprise anyone to learn that Tierney actually had her own tragic instabilities? She was out of movies for a long while after the age of 35. She is said, probably with accuracy, to have been depressive and bipolar. She underwent more than two dozen shock treatments. She had to be talked off a ledge. At one point during her therapy she was instructed to work as a salesgirl in a department store (whose nutty idea was that?) and was of course spotted, creating a media furor.
Some of her downward trajectory may stem from circumstances surrounding the birth of her first daughter by then-husband and fashion designer Oleg Cassini. Tierney contracted German measles from an over-zealous fan who snuck out of military quarantine to attend one of the star’s personal appearances; this resulted in her daughter being born premature, severely underweight, deaf, partially blind, and retarded. (This is such an ultimate “wages of stardom” story that Agatha Christie could not resist using it in her novel The Mirror Crack’d.)
Tierney also had a wild love life, encompassing Cassini, John F. Kennedy, Tyrone Power, Prince Ali Khan of Pakistan (Rita Hayworth’s ex), Howard Hughes, and second husband W. Howard Lee (a Texas oil baron who was Hedy Lamarr’s ex). Her legendary beauty might have had something to do with that.
As with so many entertainers, her life was ultimately a mess (albeit a lucrative one). But she was a gifted performer, too, and her unstable quality is very effective in all the movies that I mentioned.
Whirlpool is a lesser entry in my ongoing Otto Preminger project. Even his great directorial skill can only do so much with a storyline that is, as the Time Out Film Guide rightly says, “daft.” The film is also slightly hobbled by a weak central performance by Richard Conte as Tierney’s psychologist husband. Conte could do villains (“Mr. Brown” in The Big Combo), but not noble intellectuals.
But, on the plus side of the ledger, there is Jose Ferrer as the hypnotist David Korvo. Ferrer was newly arrived from the Broadway stage — this was only his second film — and although it is oftimes said that the only good acting technique is the kind that disguises itself, Ferrer is a blast to watch here precisely because of his palpable and undisguised technique. It is well matched to the charlatanry of his character, true, but there is also a sheer joy in showoffiness like that of a nakedly virtuosic violinist. Ferrer is especially good with his voice; every syllable he utters has a precise function and lands just where he wishes it. I grinned throughout this performance, which of its kind could scarcely be bettered.
October 30th, 2019 at 9:02 am
A great followup review to Dan’s, Patrick. Thanks! This is not a movie I’ve seen yet, but I’ll move it up in the queue to be watched right now.