Spellbound (1945) - film review

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...

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

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