A wealth of superb Otto Preminger movies have found their way onto DVD in 2005. Laura (1944), Advise and Consent (1962) and Bunny Lake is Missing (1965) are all here, a deluxe edition of The Man With the Golden Arm (1955) arrives in October, and Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) will hit shelves in December. Compared to these, Whirlpool (1949) is a minor Preminger film, but it's still a good one well worth a look. Fox Home Entertainment's fine presentation (as part of the Fox Film Noir series) makes it even better.

An intricately plotted script establishes Gene Tierney right off the bat as a closeted kleptomaniac. When she is caught shoplifting at a department store, oily hypnotist Jose Ferrer is there to see it and intervene. Tierney fears that her psychoanalyst husband (Richard Conte) will learn of her kleptomania so she meets with Ferrer in the hopes that hypnosis will cure her. But to Ferrer, a weak and unstable mind is a pliable mind. And a pliable mind means that Tierney is just the kind of woman he needs - to frame for a murder, of course! Eventually a police detective (Charles Bickford) enters the story to try and solve said murder, and Conte realizes he must save his marriage. All three men are attempting, in effect, to access Tierney's mind in some way.

On the surface, Whirlpool is a convoluted, implausible melodrama which even works in an unlikely scene of self-hypnosis. Yet it holds together quite well on the basis of its underlying, psychological character motivations. The script has an answer for everything. Ferrer may be creepy and smooth-talking, for instance, but he's good at what he does, and his diagnoses of Tierney mental condition are right on the money. Similarly, there is a psychological honesty in the way Tierney and Conte's marriage is presented. Whirlpool is really a film about character relationships, which is undoubtedly what interested Preminger.

Instead of trying to build Hitchcock-style suspense, Preminger approaches the story more objectively. He generally asks us to observe his characters react to situations rather than have us participate in the reacting. This is an engrossing approach which Preminger would take over and over in his career and which is always fascinating to ponder. In Whirlpool, the bad guy and his scheme are revealed to us well before they are revealed to the characters. Normally this would create emotional involvement for the audience, but here it serves to detach us and cause intellectual involvement. As another example, watch the simple 20-second sequence in which Tierney, under hypnosis, drives from her home to a dead woman's house. The camera never shares the car with Tierney. Instead, we are always watching her from outside, usually in long shot as her car winds through the streets. Instead of driving with her, we're watching her drive. The difference is somehow both subtle and glaring.

As for the cast, Tierney is her usual sophisticated self and Ferrer is a bit over the top but otherwise effective. Richard Conte could, and did, play villains and good guys very well in a multitude of films noirs around this period. But he seems miscast as a respectable psychoanalyst, a rather bland role which is neither sympathetic nor despicable. He gives his character a jolt of energy, however, with his tough street-guy demeanor still coming through in his voice and body language. Conte was always dynamic when asked to show anger.

Critic Richard Schickel devotes far and away most of his commentary track to examining the script's content and themes, with little on the style and aesthetics of the movie. More of that side would have been welcome, but overall his commentary is interesting. For example, he makes a good point about the three men (Bickford, Conte, Ferrer) representing three varying ways of approaching the story's problem (rational, scientific, and pseudo-scientific), and three forces which are vying for control of Tierney's fate. He ties this into the role of women in post WWII American society, which is certainly valid enough. The technical apects of this DVD are very well handled by Fox, and even the DVD cover design is beautiful, using Whirlpool's original poster art.

For more information about Whirlpool, visit Fox Home Entertainment. To order Whirlpool, go to TCM Shopping.

by Jeremy Arnold