Whirlpool is an Otto Preminger film noir, starring Gene Tierney as the kleptomaniac wife of a psychoanalyst. Produced in 1949 from a Ben Hecht screenplay (under the blacklist pseudonym 'Lester Barstow') adapted from Guy Endore 's Methinks the Lady..., the film combines psychological thriller (the heroine is controlled by a murderous hypnotist) with melodrama, as the central character's distant marriage is threatened.