Whirlpool

A doctor's wife, a blackmailing hypnotist, and a corpse she wakes up beside — Whirlpool (1950), directed by Otto Preminger, is ready to watch online on iFILM. Ann, married to a celebrated psychoanalyst, gets caught pocketing a brooch, and the smooth operator who witnesses it turns that small shame into a hook.

The quack, David Korvo (José Ferrer), works the anxious socialite over with hypnosis sessions, flattery and a slow surrender of her own will. When a former patient of her husband's is found dead, Ann is standing over the body with no memory of how she got there. To the police, only one suspect makes sense. Gene Tierney plays a woman whose own mind fails her at the exact moment everything depends on it.

Preminger built a cold, precise noir about the manipulation of the mind, two years after he and Tierney made Laura together. It leans psychological rather than fast: the tension comes not from chases but from watching the heroine get taken apart piece by piece. One for fans of classic noir and old Hollywood. Watch Whirlpool (1950) online on iFILM.