Spellbound

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Produced by David O. Selznick
Written by Story: Hilary Saint, George Saunders & John Palmer
Screenplay: Angus MacPhail & Ben Hecht
Starring: Ingrid Bergman
Gregory Peck
Michael Chekhov
Leo G. Carroll
Rhonda Fleming
Music by Miklós Rózsa
Cinematography George Barnes
Editing by Hal C. Kern
Studio Selznick International Pictures
Distributed by United Artists
Release date(s) October 31, 1945
Running time 111 minutes
Country United States
Language English

Spellbound is a 1945 psychological mystery thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It was nominated for the Academy Award for best picture, and won Oscars for best music, thanks to the score by Miklós Rózsa. Its most famous scene was a dream sequence designed by surrealist artist Salvador Dali.

The film is quite interesting but not what I would consider one of Hitchcock’s best, mainly due to how annoying the beautiful Ingrid Bergman is at the times when she is spouting off psychoanalytical mumbo-jumbo. Sure this is a film about psychiatrists but sometimes it just is a little too much.

If you forget about the psychoanalysis stuff this then becomes a whodunit, with Ingrid Bergman out to prove the innocence of amnesiac Gregory Peck, who it is believed murdered a prominent psychiatrist before taking his place. The way the mystery is solved is quite clever in the way in which it ties into the dream sequence that Peck experienced. Overall I did enjoy the film and the mystery elements to it. I also must make a comment about the brief display of Technicolor that appears in this black & white film at the climax.

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