SPELLBOUND
Many different themes obsessed director Alfred Hitchcock. A person could make a paltry living just compiling them all. Hitchcock movies with train sequences, Hitchcock movies with a MacGuffin, Hitchcock movies with famous monuments, Hitchcock movies where the musical score makes sly commentary on the story, Hitchcock movies involving mistaken identity and espionage, dream sequences, or Hitchcock movies where the director makes a cameo appearance (which, while not technically a theme, probably suggests something thematic)--all of these must take a step backwards and bow to the theme of mental illness. Perhaps the most famous is Psycho, followed closely by Vertigo and the underrated Marnie. A degree of incarceration is inherent in mental illness, whether it be the slavery of addiction, the inability to resolve complex issues, the struggle with identity, a stifling of creativity, or the ability to recall traumatic events. To that end, there is only a superficial difference between the captivity we witness in a movie such as Lifeboat and the psychological imprisonment of Spellbound (1945).
This movie conjoins most of Hitchcock's favorite ideas. From the opening Shakespearean quotation ("The Fault is not in Our Stars, but in Ourselves") to the conclusion with a gun firing into the camera, the director grabs our shoulders and shakes us, practically screaming about how important this movie is. That, of course, is the fatal flaw of the film.
Written by Ben Hecht and starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, based on everything the director thought movies should be about, one would think the bloody thing could hardly miss.
Well, it missed, despite its popularity in the film-maker's England.
The biggest problem with the movie is also its most visually intriguing element: the Salvador Dali animated dream. Running two minutes, the uncut sequence ran to nearly twenty before the producer sliced it. The importance of free association is paramount to the success of psychoanalysis, a science from which the movie borrows liberally. The segment is indulgent, convoluted, and irrelevant, despite being somewhat beautiful.
The second element that lets down the viewer is psychoanalysis itself. In spite of getting most of the details correct and implementing their discussion with considerable confidence, Hitchcock simply allows the science to overwhelm the story without having developed the characters enough for the audience to care enough to overlook the extended digressions.
In most Hitchcock movies, even minor characters permit the audience to project themselves into the drama. Spellbound plays so hard to the nonexistent sexual tension between Peck and Bergman that by the end of the film we hope the bullet will put us out of our misery. This motion picture would not even qualify for a footnote if it were not for the names attached to it. Ben Hecht was certainly not well represented by this. Other than for Hitchcock fanatics, this is one spell best left to the witches.
Many different themes obsessed director Alfred Hitchcock. A person could make a paltry living just compiling them all. Hitchcock movies with train sequences, Hitchcock movies with a MacGuffin, Hitchcock movies with famous monuments, Hitchcock movies where the musical score makes sly commentary on the story, Hitchcock movies involving mistaken identity and espionage, dream sequences, or Hitchcock movies where the director makes a cameo appearance (which, while not technically a theme, probably suggests something thematic)--all of these must take a step backwards and bow to the theme of mental illness. Perhaps the most famous is Psycho, followed closely by Vertigo and the underrated Marnie. A degree of incarceration is inherent in mental illness, whether it be the slavery of addiction, the inability to resolve complex issues, the struggle with identity, a stifling of creativity, or the ability to recall traumatic events. To that end, there is only a superficial difference between the captivity we witness in a movie such as Lifeboat and the psychological imprisonment of Spellbound (1945).
This movie conjoins most of Hitchcock's favorite ideas. From the opening Shakespearean quotation ("The Fault is not in Our Stars, but in Ourselves") to the conclusion with a gun firing into the camera, the director grabs our shoulders and shakes us, practically screaming about how important this movie is. That, of course, is the fatal flaw of the film.
Written by Ben Hecht and starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, based on everything the director thought movies should be about, one would think the bloody thing could hardly miss.
Well, it missed, despite its popularity in the film-maker's England.
The biggest problem with the movie is also its most visually intriguing element: the Salvador Dali animated dream. Running two minutes, the uncut sequence ran to nearly twenty before the producer sliced it. The importance of free association is paramount to the success of psychoanalysis, a science from which the movie borrows liberally. The segment is indulgent, convoluted, and irrelevant, despite being somewhat beautiful.
The second element that lets down the viewer is psychoanalysis itself. In spite of getting most of the details correct and implementing their discussion with considerable confidence, Hitchcock simply allows the science to overwhelm the story without having developed the characters enough for the audience to care enough to overlook the extended digressions.
In most Hitchcock movies, even minor characters permit the audience to project themselves into the drama. Spellbound plays so hard to the nonexistent sexual tension between Peck and Bergman that by the end of the film we hope the bullet will put us out of our misery. This motion picture would not even qualify for a footnote if it were not for the names attached to it. Ben Hecht was certainly not well represented by this. Other than for Hitchcock fanatics, this is one spell best left to the witches.
