Spellbound
1945 Drama / Romance / Thriller
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Credits
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Summary
When Dr Murchison retires from Green Manors psychiatric hospital, an
eminent young expert in psychoanalysis, Dr Edwardes, is hired as his
replacement. From the outset, Edwardes’ erratic behaviour arouses
the suspicion of one of his colleagues, Dr Constance
Petersen. It soon becomes apparent that the man named
Edwardes is an impostor who is hiding a dark and deadly secret.
Realising that she has fallen in love with the enigmatic stranger,
Constance decides to use her psychoanalytical training to unravel the
mystery of his past and try to discover his true identity. What
she doesn’t know is that the real Edwardes was murdered and that her
investigation will lead her to the door of his killer...
Review
Spellbound is one of the few
films directed by Alfred Hitchcock which is less highly regarded today
than it was when it was first released. The main reason for this
is that it relies upon ideas of psychoanalysis which were
very much in vogue in the 1940s but which have since been largely discredited.
As a result, Spellbound's
psychobabble-driven plot lacks substance and credibility, almost to the
point that the film now feels more like a laboured parody of a Hitchcock
thriller rather than the real thing. This is not to say that the
film is entirely without merit. It is as imaginatively directed
and stylishly photographed as any Hitchcock film from this era, and the
pairing of Ingrid Bergman with Gregory Peck works well - even if Peck’s
performance is somewhat lacking in subtlety.Despite the film’s commercial success, Hitchcock was dismissive of it, describing it as "a manhunt story wrapped up in pseudo-psychoanalysis". It was the second of three films that he directed under contract for producer David O. Selznick - the others being Rebecca (1940) and The Paradine Case (1947). At the time Selznick had a great personal interest in psychoanalysis and was determined to make a screen adaptation of Francis Beeding’s novel "The House of Dr Edwardes", a popular thriller which was inspired by recent developments in psychoanalytical theory. Hitchcock was less than enthusiastic about the venture and Selznick’s decision to hire his own therapist as the film’s technical adviser merely aggravated tensions between the two men. The film is best remembered for its stunning expressionistic dream sequence, which was directed not by Hitchcock but by William Cameron Menzies, the director of the sci-fi classic Things To Come (1936). This sequence was designed by the avant-garde surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and was originally intended to last for twenty minutes, including a shot of stone statue disintegrating to reveal Ingrid Bergman covered in ants. Although most of this sequence was shot, only about two minutes of it ended up in the final cut of the film - mainly because Selznick absolutely hated it. The Dalí dream sequence may be the film's artistic highpoint, but Hitchcock scores a few palpable hits with some daring point of view shots - one where a potential killer watches his intended victim through a glass of milk he is drinking, the other where the real villain points a gun at Ingrid Bergman before turning the gun on himself. Another masterstroke is Miklós Rózsa's tension-building score, which won the film its one and only Oscar. © James Travers 2008 Write a review for this film... For World Cinema on DVD... 
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