Product Details

• Region: All Regions
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000AREDKQ
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #187,987 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dreams of Morality Perversion and Exposed Evil, October 27, 2005

By 

gobirds2 (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alfred Hitchcock - Spellbound (DVD)

SPELLBOUND was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by David O. Selznick in 1945. As the story unravels it is essentially a murder plot interwoven around psychiatrists and psychoanalysis. It is actually Alfred Hitchcock's approach to the story and his collaborations with composer Miklos Rozsa and surrealist artist Salvador Dali that highlights this film. Gregory Peck plays John "J.B." Ballantine who poses as a psychiatrist while in a state of amnesia. Uncovered by Dr. Constance Peterson played by Ingrid Bergman, Ballantine must find out if he is responsible for the death of the missing psychiatrist that he posed as and simultaneously discover his own identity. Miklos Rozsa's score is both romantic yet eerie as Ballantine tries to remember what happened through analysis of his dreams. Alfred Hitchcock hired Salvador Dali to design illustrations and paintings in order to construct a crisp and vivid rendering of these dreams. Hitchcock did not want to use conventional techniques such as blurred camera shots to recreate the dreams. He wanted them to be as clear and even sharper than the rest of the film. He wanted Dali's style of using shadows, lines of convergence and the idea of infinite distance incorporated into the dream sequences. In the dream sequence we see a black stage highlighted with people at gambling tables with huge mysterious looking eyes peering over them. A man cuts away at the fabric of one eye with a giant scissors revealing another eye. In another part of the dream we see a man standing on a roof behind a chimney that has sprouted roots. The hooded man holds what looks like a deformed or eccentric wagon wheel in his hand. In the distance there is a formation of rocks and boulders, which look like they are sprouting into the shape of a man's head. Another part of the dream shows a man running down a pitched geometric plane as the shadow of a bird follows him. In the background there are geometric shapes and lines that go off into infinity. All these images must be interpreted into experiences from reality. Dali's images are unsettling and thought provoking. Eventually, the eccentric wagon wheel turns out to represent the chambers of a revolver pistol and reveals the true identity of the murderer. A surrealistic painting brings to the canvas an image from reality but puts it into a context of the unreal. I think Dali was successful in translating the realistic elements from the plot into a vision of incomprehensibility of the conscious human mind. Hitchcock and the scriptwriter Ben Hecht then had their characters translate Dali's images back into plausible reality. This is brilliant filmmaking years ahead of its time.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hitchcock pyscho-thriller at its best, December 27, 2006

By 

Stratiotes Doxha Theon "2 Thes 2:15" (Richmond, Missouri) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Alfred Hitchcock - Spellbound (DVD)

This is, in my opinion, one of Hitchcock's most interesting psychological thrillers. The dream-scapes with the help of Salvadore Dali are phenomenal and add the earie feel of being accompanied by a possible psychopath. Ingrid Bergman as the doting and believing woman standing by her misunderstood and hated man gives one of her best performances. Gregory Peck has never been better than as the neurotic self-loathing victim of his own guilt complex. A wonderful and enjoyable twist and turn of the plot making you wonder all along how we can ever discover the truth. Great filmaking as only Hitchcock could do it.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spellbinding and Fascinating, February 27, 2008

By 

Joseph C. Aulenbrock (Torrance, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Alfred Hitchcock - Spellbound (DVD)

The new DVD is a Korean reissue of the 1945 film. Many Koreans seem to be fascinated with American culture. This reissue appears to be intended primarily for Korean speakers. but there is no dubbing. The voices are the original English ones. There is an option for Korean or English subtitles, which leads to some humorous misspellings and outright mistakes in the English subtitles.

It is reported that Alfred Hitchcock made the comment that Spellbound "is just another manhunt story wrapped up in pseudo-psychoanalysis." It is much more than that. Most obviously it is a touching and powerful love story. How pseudo- the psychoanalysis is should also be questioned. The film was made with the aid of a psychiatric advisor.

Psychoanalysis is about the mind, and we all have our ideas about how the mind works. If some of the psychoanalysis sequences seem farfetched, others may ring a bell. Perhaps most of us are influenced in this by our own dreams, which we may be able to relate to our own conscious experiences. A focus of the story is Dr. Edwards' book "The Labyrinth of the Guilt Complex." If we question that, we may still agree that the subconscious is a labyrinth.