Otto Preminger
Whirlpool

This second collaboration from 1950 between Otto Preminger and Gene Tierney does not have the fame or glamour of their first, the ineffable Laura, from 1944, but remains an interesting film, a product of an era when it was still possible to believe that science and rationality had some chance of redeeming mankind.

Tierney portrays Ann Sutton, the tormented wife of the renowned psychoanalyst William Sutton. Suffering from kleptomania, Ann is arrested for stealing a brooch in a department store. To rescue her comes David Korvo, a distinguished stranger who seems to pass by coincidentally - but it soon becomes clear that Korvo does nothing by chance. He is a charlatan posing as a healer, an expert in hypnotism, and above all, a seasoned manipulator. After reassuring Ann of his benevolent intentions, he offers to cure her of her insomnia and her compulsion to steal.

Overcome with guilt, Ann does not want to involve her husband for fear of shattering the facade of the “perfect marriage”. But this very reticence turns against her: Korvo, blackmailed by his former lover Theresa, decides to kill her and frame Ann, crafting an almost perfect plan where Ann seems to be a jealous lover. The plan works: Ann is arrested, and Korvo seems to have an unassailable alibi. Only the combined efforts of her husband William and Commissioner Colton can attempt to save her.

The film, which could be described as a psychological thriller, finds its most interesting point precisely in the collaboration between these two men. William, rational and calm, despite the pain of possible betrayal, refuses to believe that the wife he knows so well could have killed. Colton, perhaps weakened by personal grief for his recently deceased wife, chooses to assist them.

The film works thanks to the interplay of relationships between the characters, although the use of hypnosis - and even more, self-hypnosis - might bring a smile. However, Preminger's direction is solid, flawless. Richard Conte and José Ferrer, in the roles of William and Korvo respectively, lack the charisma and elegance of Dana Andrews and Clifton Webb, Tierney’s two male counterparts in Laura, but they manage adequately.

Tierney, though always beautiful, appears more fragile, more subdued compared to her previous roles, and it’s not difficult to see the shadow of the personal tragedy that had recently struck her, with the birth of a severely disabled daughter. Her suffering, restrained yet palpable, gives the character a melancholy that the film does not explicitly convey.

Perhaps influenced by Hitchcock's Spellbound, Whirlpool offers the same reassuring illusion: that the darkness of the human mind is penetrable and curable. An illusion that, as we know, has not stood the test of time.

Available in the Italian version on YouTube, with the unoriginal title "Il Segreto di una Donna".