Whirlpool (1949) review

Amateur thief Ann (Gene Tierney), the wife of a psychiatrist (Richard Conte), gets caught stealing a pricey pin from a department store, but smooth-talking hypnotist Mr. Korvo (Jose Ferrer) appears, gets her out of trouble, and then starts 'counseling' her, using his Svengali-like powers to brainwash her into stealing from her own husband and being present at the scene of a murder.  Almost every time Hollywood makes any movie about psychiatry it comes out as clunky - which is ironic because people who work in the Biz frequent therapists of all types - and the plot here, based on the novel by Guy Endore, is comically bad: try watching the last twenty minutes without rolling your eyes.  One of the screenwriters was the usually reliable Ben Hecht, who had to have known it was trash and couldn't fix it so he gave up; Conte always looks like he's thinking about something else entirely ("Did I leave the stove on?").