Spellbound

Spellbound

Spellbound

source: Spellbound

Trailer—Spellbound

Spellbound

This film centered around psychology and the interpretation of dreams. One very neat scene shows a short dream sequence a la Salvador Dali and one of his wild paintings. I wish the rest of the film was as cool as that, although I usually enjoy looking at Ingrid Bergman's face, too. She's very pretty in here: a real pleasure to this male's eye. I also enjoyed listening to the older psychiatrist in this film played by Michael Chekov. I liked the fact he said he was from Rochester, New York, which is only about 50 miles from where I live. Otherwise, it had a bunch of typical Alfred Hitchcock traits such as very little action; an innocent man being framed, God never being a solution to anything - complete secular viewpoints about everything. Overall, I thought the movie was "fair" but not a "keeper" because stories in which nice people are slowly driven insane do not appeal to me.

Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) is a cold psychoanalyst at the mental hospital Green Manors. The director Dr. Murchison is being forced to retire after a mental breakdown. Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck) is his new replacement but he seems to be suffering from mental disturbances and younger than expected. Constance's icy exterior starts to melt for him but she uncovers that he's an impostor. He claims to have lost his memories. Psychiatrists are not my favorite character tropes. They usually sit and talk in very static scenes. I like the first act here and it sets up something interesting. Once he turns out to be amnesiac, the movie gets stuck and I'm simply sitting there waiting for him to remember. There is an interesting section with surrealistic dreams from artist Salvador Dalí at 90 minutes. However I don't like all the psychobabble. The hour in the middle could have been cut in half. I'm normally a happy Hitchcock fan but this hit me wrong in a couple of ways.

"Spellbound" is probably one of Hitchcock's most uneven films. It has some brilliant scenes (like the point-of-view shot near the end) that showcase Hitchcock's mastery and imagination, but it also has too many talky sequences and it takes too much time to reach its less-than-satisfying conclusion. Hitchcock relies heavily on psychological theories for his explanations, but I think that those explanations are far too simplistic. The "decoding" of the weird dream sequences is also too literal: every image has a definite and obvious meaning - does that ever happen in YOUR dreams? The low point is, for me, the explanation that the movie provides for the wheel's presence in the dream.