Customer Reviews

Alfred Hitchcock - Spellbound

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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.

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.

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.

Leibniz said, "We all carry the burden of the past." What is that burden? For me there is a recollection of wanderings in the Detroit Institute of Art where many paintings caught my attention, and my burden, light though it was, was to learn their significance in religion or life. In Spellbound, director Alfred Hitchcock was carrying the burden of Freud's concept `the unconscious' to depict psychoanalysis as a therapy. The main characters in the film are psychiatrist Dr. Constance Peterson played by Ingrid Bergman and pseudo-psychiatrist John "JB" Ballantine played by Gregory Peck impersonating Dr. Anthony Edwardes.

Opening scenes concern the arrival of a new director to Green Manors, Vermont, a psychiatric hospital. He is Anthony Edwardes, who is played by Peck carrying unwittingly an assumed identity. Edwardes is an expert on guilt complexes who is replacing Dr. Murchison who is retiring due to age and overwork. Edwardes is the author of a book: The Labyrinth of the Guilt Complex. In this story is a deep mystery to be resolved. It is to reveal to all concerned the manner in which an unconscious guilt has acted to create this assumed identity that dominates the mind of John Ballantine through his unconscious. His burden must be made plain.

This mystery is of stupefying complexity. Unknown to all concerned is the spell binding Ballantine to an assumed identity due to a burden of his hidden past. Some clues can be offered, though a reviewer must not reveal elements of the plot that give away the denouement.

Dr. Peterson at Green Manors is a lovely woman who coldly repels amorous advances made to her by a colleague among the psychiatrists. She knows the work of Anthony Edwardes and keenly admires it. At an initial lunch he reacts sharply to her drawing lines with her fork on the tablecloth to illustrate a grounds layout. She maintains a correct reserve in her demeanor. He is soon attracted to her and later she accepts his invitation to an afternoon walk in nearby meadows. Later, in the evening, they declare their love to each other. Edwardes embraces her but reacts to lines on her robe. We have the second clue that not all is well with Dr. Edwardes.

The lover's séance is interrupted by an emergency that requires surgery for a patient. They rush to the operating room and there Dr. Edwardes has an attack of anxiety that reveals his serious personality disorder. The dramatic intrigue of the story is set and a tension between love and mental illness moves to the foreground. In attending to him, Dr. Peterson discovers he is an imposter with initials "JB" whose signature differs from that of the real Dr. Edwardes. Further revelations bring in the police to search for the missing Dr. Edwardes and for JB who has run away. Let us compress action in this supporting plot to move to a significant dream sequence made vivid by paintings from Salvador Dali.

In this dream sequence Freud's concept `unconscious' becomes central in that symbols in this dream become significant in the life of a patient. We can say that knowledge and truth become evident with interpretation. For this patient there is a process of new learning that will dispel the source of a guilt complex. The case of wrongdoing is dismissed when it is learned that there was no wrong. Thereby the patient is freed of this debilitating complex.

This film presents a powerful drama akin to plays such as Hamlet or Macbeth. See this story not as an instructional text but as such meaning as a person's life can take on in the face of excessive stress. A person becomes unable to make sense of a progress of events. As always, Hitchcock is a master storyteller.

Aesthetics, religion, philosophy and psychology are merged in this scenario. A philosopher can compose a rational account of events to bring knowledge and truth into focus. A psychologist can compose an account of the governing dynamics of personality, especially in the case history of a dysfunctional patient. Aesthetics and religion offer insight into symbol systems such as dreams and Dali's paintings.

In the Detroit Institute of Art there are paintings, a pair with paired scenes and captions, "Le Travail" and "Le Repos," work and rest of tillers of the soil. Significance for life is shown in such rhythm of our days. In this rhythm there is a paradox. In an individual life moving from the silence of the womb to the silence of the tomb, we each are burdened as persons to make sense of what happens to each of us. We wish to have closure in interpretation of events as in resolving a mystery in a detective story. We must establish meaning with a labyrinth of language that is of open meaning and does not allow closure. We want closure but resist closure in an effort to be open to oneself as a process. It is a paradox that to make sense is a search to establish closure where there can be no closure. We can take a precept from Goethe that to live is to strive.

Hitchcock does not strive alone in presenting this drama. Convincing portrayals are given by Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck in concert with others of the cast in a screenplay authored by Ben Hecht. Miklos Rozsa lets his music signal with a leitmotif each moment of mental aberration. Psychiatric advice is supplied by Dr. May E. Romm, MD. David O. Selznick is producer. A good story is here engaging and not to be missed.

This is my number 1 favourite movie of all time! Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck are magnificent and the chemistry between them is wonderful. Hitchcock created a truly superb romantic picture. His best movie of his entire collection.

I purchased this Korean/US version hoping to get a DVD version of a Hitchcock classic. I don't mind dealing with the multi-language selection defaulting to Korean, but the English soundtrack had so much vibrating, buzzing noise that the movie is absolutely unwatchable. This was disappointing. I would rate this a zero, but Amazon requires at least one star. This was a waste of time and money.

There is one scene in Alfred Hitchcock's 1945 classic that epitomizes what's both cinematically unique and logically wrong about the whole venture. Late in the story, comely therapist Dr. Constance Petersen and her inadvertent patient John Brown (or is it Dr. Anthony Edwardes?) set off skiing on an empty, pristine slope in Gabriel Valley. The two attractive stars are obviously shot standing still against an aggressive wind machine in front of a moving screen matte of the Alpine scenery. It's really a concurrently thrilling and silly-looking shot designed to build suspense, and it's easy to dismiss its artifice until it all ends in a key revelation. The rest of the movie suffers from the same conflicting dilemma, i.e., isolated moments of cinematic bravado that interweave with a preposterous Baroque-level storyline.

Written by Ben Hecht and Angus MacPhail, the plot begins with the staff of a country asylum awaiting the arrival of Dr. Edwardes to replace the retiring Dr. Murchison. Enter a man who thinks he's Edwardes until it becomes clear that the real Edwardes has been murdered. In the meantime, the normally reserved Dr. Petersen has become drawn to the young Edwardes doppelganger, who becomes her patient and then her lover. When he is accused of the murder, the couple go on the lam in her desperate hope of finding the truth about his identity and who the murderer really is. Just like Hitchcock's first American picture, the 1940 classic Rebecca, this film was produced by David O. Selznick in his trademark glossy manner, but this time, Selznick appears more confident about his director's abilities as Hitchcock's atmospheric touches are more abundant here. There is even a surreal dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali and one hilariously effective metaphor of doors opening when the lovers kiss.

George Barnes' deep-focus cinematography, Miklos Rozsa's evocative music (though a bit too macabre at times) and James Basevi's art direction are all first-rate. As Petersen, Ingrid Bergman is saddled with a role that has her explaining and probing ad nauseam, but somehow her natural luminescence comes through her professional exterior. Gregory Peck, on the other hand, is more problematic as the traumatized hero since he has to convince us that he could be a murderer when his young and naturally stalwart manner makes such dire emotions rather incredible. Smaller roles are filled expertly with layered work from Leo G. Carroll as Murchison and Michael Chekhof as Peterson's eccentric mentor. In the impressive Hitchcock canon, it is a highly stylized but ultimately middling effort.