Spellbound (1945 film)

Dr. Constance Petersen is a psychoanalyst at Green Manors, a therapeutic community mental hospital in Vermont. She is perceived by the other doctors as detached and emotionless. The director of the hospital, Dr. Murchison, is being forced into retirement, shortly after returning from an absence due to nervous exhaustion. His replacement is Dr. Anthony Edwardes, who turns out to be surprisingly young. Petersen is immediately smitten with Edwardes.

They fall in love. One day, while they are kissing, however, Petersen notices that this Edwardes has a peculiar phobia about sets of parallel lines against a white background. She also soon realizes, by comparing handwriting, that this man is not the real Edwardes, but an impostor. He confides to her that he has killed the real Edwardes and taken his place. He suffers from amnesia and does not know who he is. Petersen believes he is innocent and that he is suffering from a guilt complex. He disappears overnight, leaving a note for her. At the same time, it becomes public knowledge that the supposed Edwardes is an impostor, and that the real Edwardes is missing and may have been killed.

Petersen manages to track him down and starts to use her psychoanalytic training to break his amnesia and find out what really happened. Pursued by the police, Petersen and the impostor (calling himself John Brown) travel by train to Rochester, New York, where they stay with Dr. Alexander Brulov, Petersen's former mentor.

The two doctors analyze a dream that Brown had. He is playing cards in New York, when a woman who looks very much like Constance, without anything on, starts kissing everybody there. While he and his opponent play, however, a stranger with a face mask comes and accuses the other man of cheating. Soon after, the alleged "cheater" falls down, and the masked man laughs, then drops what looks like a white wheel. Then, Brown hears someone chasing him on a white piece of ground.

They deduce that Brown and Edwardes had been on a ski trip together (the lines in white being ski tracks), and that Edwardes had somehow died there. Petersen and Brown go to the Gabriel Valley ski resort (the wings provide a clue), to reenact the event.

A still from Spellbound

Brown suddenly recalls that there is a precipice in front of them, over which Edwardes fell to his death. He stops just in time. He also remembers a traumatic event from his childhood – he slid down a hand rail with his brother at the bottom, accidentally knocking him onto sharp-pointed railings, killing him instantly. This incident had caused him to develop a guilt complex. He also remembers that his real name is John Ballantyne. Then it is discovered that Edwardes had a bullet in his body. Ballantyne is convicted of murder and sent to prison.

A heartbroken Petersen returns to her position at the hospital, where Murchison is once again the director. Murchison lets slip that he knew Edwardes slightly and did not like him, contradicting his earlier statement that they had never met. Now suspicious, Petersen reconsiders her notes from the dream and realizes that the wheel is a revolver, and that the man hiding behind the chimney and dropping the wheel was Murchison, who shot Edwardes and then dropped the gun.

On a hunch, Petersen confronts Murchison. She relates Ballantyne's dream to him, and he admits that the masked man seems very much like him. She tricks him into admitting that he was the one who murdered Edwardes. Murchison says that he still has the gun and threatens to kill her. She walks away, the gun pointed at her, explaining that while the first murder was committed under the extenuating circumstances of his fragile mental state, her murder would certainly lead him to the electric chair. He lets her leave, then kills himself.

Petersen is reunited with Ballantyne. They leave on their honeymoon.

Spellbound was made over contract disagreements between Alfred Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznick. Hitchcock's contract with Selznick began in March 1939, but only resulted in three films, Spellbound, Rebecca (1940) and The Paradine Case (1947). (Notorious was sold to RKO in mid-production.) Selznick wanted Hitchcock to make a movie based upon Selznick's own positive experience with psychoanalysis. Selznick even brought in his therapist, May Romm, MD, who was credited in the film as a technical adviser. Dr. Romm and Hitchcock clashed frequently.[6]

Further contention was caused by the hiring of surrealist artist Salvador Dalí to conceive certain scenes in the film's key dream sequence. However, the sequence conceived and designed by Dalí and Hitchcock, once translated to film, proved to be too lengthy and complicated for Selznick, so the vast majority of what had been filmed ultimately was edited out. Two minutes of the dream sequence appear in the final film, but according to Ingrid Bergman, the original had been twenty minutes long.[7]

The cut footage apparently is now considered a lost footage, although some production stills have survived in the Selznick archives. Eventually, Selznick hired William Cameron Menzies, who had worked on Gone With the Wind, to oversee the set designs and direct the sequence. Hitchcock himself had very little to do with its actual filming.[7]

Spellbound was shot in black and white, except for two frames of bright red at the conclusion, when Dr. Murchison's gun is fired into the camera. This detail was deleted in most 16mm and video formats but was restored for the film's DVD release and airings on Turner Classic Movies.

Parts of the film were shot in Alta, Utah.[8]^:287

Newsweek's review evaluated the film as "a superior and suspenseful melodrama;"[20] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that the story was "a rather obvious and often-told tale ... but the manner and quality of its telling is extraordinarily fine ... the firm texture of the narration, the flow of continuity and dialogue, the shock of the unexpected, the scope of image—all are happily here."[21] Variety wrote that Bergman gave a "beautiful characterization" and that Peck "handles the suspense scenes with great skill and has one of his finest screen roles to date."[22] Harrison's Reports wrote: "Very good! ... The performances of the entire cast are superior, and throughout the action an overtone of suspense and terror, tinged with touches of deep human interest and appealing romance, is sustained."[23] John McCarten of The New Yorker wrote that "when the film stops trying to be esoteric and abandons arcane mumbling for good, rousing melodrama, it moves along in the manner to which Hitchcock has accustomed us ... Fortunately, the English expert hasn't forgotten any of his tricks. He still has a nice regard for supplementary characters, and he uses everything from train whistles to grand orchestral crescendos to maintain excitement at a shrill pitch ... All in all, you'd better see this one."[24]

Spellbound placed fifth on Film Daily's annual poll of 559 critics across the United States naming the best films of the year.[25]

After the film's release, it broke every record in London, in both famous theaters, Pavilion and Tivoli Strand, for a single day, week, month, holiday and Sundays.[26]

It earned rentals of $4,975,000 in North America.[27][28]

Rózsa's score inspired Jerry Goldsmith to become a film composer.[30][31]

In the comedy film Lovers and Other Strangers (1970), the character Johnny (Harry Guardino) is more interested in watching Spellbound on television than his own wife Wilma (Anne Meara).[32]

Spellbound was parodied in the Mel Brooks film High Anxiety (1977).

The most notable release is the Criterion Collection release on DVD. The original release is now out of print. The film was rereleased by MGM on Blu-ray in 2012.

• Dissociative amnesia
• List of American films of 1945
• Mental illness in films

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Spellbound (1945 film)

• Spellbound at IMDb
• Spellbound at the TCM Movie Database
• Spellbound at Rotten Tomatoes
• Spellbound Concerto by Miklós Rózsa on YouTube Music to the film arranged by Rózsa
• Spellbound on Lux Radio Theater: March 8, 1948
• Photos of Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound by Ned Scott
• Photos of Rhonda Fleming in Spellbound by Ned Scott
• Selznick International’s Spellbound an essay by Leonard Leff at the Criterion Collection
• Spellbound: Love and Psychoanalysis an essay by Lesley Brill at the Criterion Collection