Perhaps the best of Alfred Hitchcock's collaborations with producer David O. Selznick, "Spellbound" stars Ingrid Bergman as Dr. Constance Petersen, a compassionate but sexually guarded psychotherapist who falls for Dr Edwardes (Gregory Peck), a new doctor who arrives at Green Manors, the mental asylum at which she works.
With a creepy, near-supernatural score by Miklos Rozsa, the film oscillates between melodrama and horror. These horrors are largely psychological, but Hitchcock's direction, and Rozsa's score, lend the film a near-paranormal edge. Like "Vertigo", "Spellbound" at times feels like a ghost story or perhaps even a story about ghostly possessions.
The issue of "possession" itself becomes the bedrock of Hitchcock's plot. Peck's character is an impostor who has taken possession of Dr Edwardes' persona. From here on, the film becomes another of Hitchcock's Kafkaesque "wrong man" rides. The real Dr Edwardes has turned up dead and law enforcement officials believe Peck to be the murderer. Peck, now revealed to be amnesic, thus goes on the run. He is supported by Constance, who attempts to prove his innocence. With the help of another famous psychoanalyst, she delves into Peck's unconscious and comes out with some semblance of truth. It turns out, she discovers, that Peck has been repressing a very specific childhood trauma: as a kid, he accidentally killed his brother. The film ends with another revelation: the true murderer of Dr Edwardes was an ageing psychoanalyst who himself feared being dispossessed by a younger man.
While Peck's an overly stiff actor, Bergman is as magnificent as ever, affording her character a range of subtle facial gestures, and a pleasant mix of intelligence, yearning and vulnerability. Hitchcock, meanwhile, hated hiring Peck, but Selznick kept saddling the director with him; Selznick thought the actor's good looks would bring in big money.
The film sports a now famous "dream sequence". It was designed by Salvador Dali, the famous surrealist, but directed by William Cameron Menzies, a man who's been unfairly forgotten by history. The first person to be given the film credits of "art director" and "production designer", Menzies is today most well known for directing the surrealist/expressionist "Invaders From Mars". He was also responsible for a number of pioneering, early special effects, and as art director was responsible for the overall "look" of a number of famous films, most notably "Gone With the Wind", which he storyboarded, colour co-ordinated and co directed. "Spellbound's" dream sequence was originally about 20 minutes long, but was highly censored by Selznick. It contains the animated shadow of a gigantic bird; Hitchcock was himself, reportedly, ornithophobic.
Like most of Hitchcock's films, our female hero is treated with much condescension by men. One great scene at a train station finds Constance turning this to her advantage; feigning naivety and playing to a detective's inflated ego, she weasels her way into a hotel room. The rest of the film both mocks and pays tribute to psychoanalysis. One eccentric character's playfully modelled on Freud, for example, the film's psychoanalytical jargon is comically overwrought, and Hitchcock manages to both turn his villain into a psychoanalyst whilst also respectfully turning psychoanalysis into that which solves the film's central crime. Elsewhere the film mistakes psychoanalysis for kitschy "dream reading". In Hitchcock's hands, psychoanalysts are nothing but art critics who decode or ascribe meaning to various warped visions.
In Jean-Luc Godard's mammoth "Histoire(s) du cinema", there's a passage in which he pauses to muse about Hitchcock. Hitch, Godard essentially says, is less about content than "decor"; bits of scenery, camera work, clothing, props and moments. You see that with "Spellbound". What you remember are various fragments: powerful point-of-view shots, a subjective shot of a character drinking milk, snow-capped streets, and a shockingly frank scene in which a child is impaled on a fence.
Upon release, "Spellbound" was embraced by critics and audiences. Today it's typically viewed as being second tier Hitchcock. It's ultimately a potboiler, tarnished by silly Freudian symbolism, but elevated by exquisite direction and some strong moments of comedy and horror.
7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.
