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You Are Getting Very Sleepy . . . by Fearless

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You Are Getting Very Sleepy . . . by Fearless You are Getting Very Sleepy . By Fearless Young Orphan Whirlpool (1949) Directed by Otto Preminger I think I need a new category of film noir called “noir kink,” and we can include in it such films as the previously discussed Undercurrent, in which we are not given a classic film noir plot but rather a noir-ish spin on what should be a healthier relationship. Whirlpool (it even has a similar name to Undercurrent, like they could be entries in a series) concerns another marriage laden with secrets, a la Rebecca and Gaslight and Suspicion. This one stars Gene Tierney as a neurotic woman (the term being a bit of a redundancy, considering the usual heroines of these films) who is married to a famous psychiatrist who fails to notice her problems, even after eight years. Granted, her problem is not a big or obvious one: Ann is a kleptomaniac. She steals trinkets from ritzy department stores, and the pat psychology provided in the film states that this is her compulsive rebellion against the controlling men in her life. Well, whatever. Ann gets caught stealing a pin in the very first scene and is being questioned fairly enough by store detectives and the manager, when an elegant, helpful man named David Korvo (Jose Ferrer) steps in to rescue her. Korvo is a sly one and a very smooth talker, plus he has an almost Sherlock Holmesian quality of being able to tell much about a person just by looking at them. He figures out Ann pretty quickly – her disorder and her marriage and her desperation. He is into psychiatry too, you see. David Korvo is an accomplished hypnotist. Now, let us pause for a moment to remind ourselves that “hypnotism” is used in the context of this film the same way that “witchcraft” or “voodoo” might be used in another, in that Korvo’s ability to hypnotize others is used as an excuse to get them to do damn near anything he wishes. It’s an utterly easy plot device, which frees the movie of the need to make an ounce of sense. But in order to enjoy the film, we’ll have to pretend like hypnotism really does work the way they say. Though it doesn’t. In no time at all, Ann awakens from a trance to find herself in a police station, being accused of the murder of a rich woman. She has absolutely no recollection of the night’s events. Clues indicate that Ann has been having an affair with David Korvo, even though she has only met him a couple times because he promised to help her kleptomania with hypnotism therapy. Ann’s been a good girl, but no one believes her. David Korvo seems to have an excellent alibi. On the night of the murder, he was in the hospital having his gall bladder removed. Ann’s husband is the handsome, helpful Dr. Bill Sutton (Richard Conte). He is crushed to learn from the police that his wife was unfaithful to him and that she killed her rival for her lover’s affections. He thought their marriage was so happy! And from what we saw, it was, if you feel like Ann’s fretful fawning over this man was happy. She is so worried about ruining his reputation that she wouldn’t tell him about her kleptomania! But Bill is also a noble manly type, and after a bit of moping, he begins to think there is more to this murder than meets the eye. He determines to make the police believe that his wife is innocent. The cops in Los Angeles, led by Lt. James Colton, do not really do things by the book, and just when we’ve wrapped our heads around the idiotic notions fed to us by the “hypnotism” plot, we now have to deal with suspending our disbelief while Colton allows his main suspect’s husband to sit in on all the interviews, hear all about the investigation, and even conduct some investigating of his own on the side. Yes, he is allowed to visit Korvo’s hospital room alone. Please recall that this is the man Bill’s wife was supposedly boinking. Yes, he is allowed to visit Lt. Colton late at night to offer outlandish hypnotism theories. Why not? Grateful that the police are completely throwing due process out the window, Bill repays their kindness by spilling all sorts of confidential information about his patients. Bill and Lt. Colton are going to solve this case the good old fashioned way, with wild speculation and a complete disregard for any written law. This movie is worth seeing just for the comical turns of events that all these oversights cause. Now, I have been hard on Whirlpool. I was rather annoyed by it, which I’m sure is obvious. I ordinarily will forgive a movie for stupidity like this if I really like or care about its characters. Unfortunately I liked no one involved except for Korvo himself, who is such a dastardly operator. Ann Sutton is a real headcase, swinging from utter devotion to her husband to fretful complaining about insomnia and that pesky kleptomania, and I swear she’s just going to teary-eye herself into nervous collapse. She’s impossible to talk to, even when her husband is trying to parse what actually happened to her, she’s more interested in crying about how “no one believes her.” Her entire predicament is solved by Bill with minimal input from her because she’s so helpless, and that is a quality that I find intolerable in characters that don’t have good reason for it. Bill and Lt. Colton are not unlikable characters in themselves but their actions are so utterly preposterous and unethical that I couldn’t quite see them as anything but foolish. And finally, when believability has been stretched to its limits and beyond, we get this final insult: Korvo stays in a hospital room and the nurse puts a “do not disturb” sign on the door, because he asks to be allowed to sleep all night. Oh yeah, right. I happen to know that hospitals have elaborate plans in place to make sure that nobody sleeps through the night, and that there is someone poking at you every 15 minutes unless you really need a pain killer, and then they’re all having lunch in the break room. Let’s go to the Noir Scoire. Our Hero: I think we’ll have to consider Bill Sutton our noir hero in this case, because he is the one who must ultimately extricate himself and his wife from this unpleasant situation. His fatal flaw, because he must have one, was his blindness to his wife’s despair. Though he is not a major player in the film until the second half, he does rally the troops to prove his wife’s innocence 7/10. As Played by: Richard Conte. Conte is a swarthy, manly sort, oozing with psychiatric compassion. Given the oddball nature of his role, I think he did a fine job portraying a man who has to believe his wife despite the evidence. 8/10. Femme Fatale: Ann Sutton fits into this category in a blameless way; she’s not a bad woman, but oh lord, is she trouble. Neurotic and a little vacant, she’s gotten herself into a hell of a scrape by trusting the wrong man. She failed to protect herself against the terrors of hypnotism! Ann is always crying about shit, too. 5/10. As Played by: Gene Tierney. Actually, I’m going to give Ms. Tierney a little credit. Sometimes when the script isn’t calling for her to act like her idiot character, she gets a rather smart twinkle in her eye, and sometimes in portraying Ann’s (almost obsessive) devotion to her husband, Tierney adds a backbone to Ann that made her practically admirable. If only it would have lasted. 7/10. The mastermind: David Korvo. Though he is wielding the nonexistent power of hypnotizing the hell out of everybody, aside from that, this is a great villain. He’s smooth and charming, with a scary, malicious intelligence. He manipulates people ruthlessly. He has Ann quite convinced that he has nothing but her best interests at heart before he makes her a murder suspect, and he knows how to turn the screws on any poor soul who tries to talk to him. He’s a bad, bad man. The film’s finale turns him into an idiot, but at least there is an excuse – he’s drugged and bleeding to death at the time, so . 10/10 As Played by: Jose Ferrer. With his bulldog face and deep, resonant voice, Ferrer makes an excellent villain. He is great as the heartless Korvo. Watch in particular for the scene in which Korvo is confronted by Bill Sutton, who believes that Ann and he were having an affair. That’s some slick acting. 10/10 The location: Los Angeles, but in the daytime, and in nice houses and fancy bars and hoity toity parties. There are only a few good noirish scenes, like Ann’s late night drive to the home of her “victim,” or the bleak hospital room in which the sweaty, feverish Korso lies in wait. 3/10. The crime/frame: Korvo has killed his former mistress to keep her from exposing his crimes, but he uses his amazing powers of hypnotism to make Ann Sutton look like the perpetrator who killed the woman in a jealous rage.
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