Spellbound (1945)

Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck

Alfred Hitchcock's 'Spellbound' is a mystery thriller made in 1945 starring Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Michael Chekhov and Leo G. Carroll. 'Spellbound' won the Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, and Michael Chekhov was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role . The film also received nominations for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; Best Director; Best Effects, Special Effects; and Best Picture.

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'Spellbound' presents an intriguing and pleasing Rubiks Cube of a plot. Dr. Murchison, the head of Green Manors, a mental asylum in Vermont, is retiring to be replaced by Dr. Anthony Edwardes, (Gregory Peck) a famous psychiatrist.

Dr. Edwardes turns out to be an amnesiac, and, realizing he's not who he thinks he is, enlists Dr. Constance Peterson (Ingrid Bergman) to help discover his actual identity, as well as the fate of the person he's apparently impersonating. With 'Dr Edwardes' now using the name 'John Brown' they go on the run to try to solve the mystery of what happened to the real Dr. Edwardes. But fascinated by the novelty of psychoanalysis, 'Spellbound' spends a little too much time focusing on the subconscious and not quite enough time focusing on actual suspense. It is a movie which is memorable for its acting, design, and musical score but, unusually for Hitchcock, the suspense and mystery are lacklustre.

When the couple, who have by now fallen in love, unlock John Brown's repressed memories, the police are able to find Dr Edwardes's body and Brown, now using his real name, Ballantyne, is imprisoned for his murder. Dr. Petersen returns to work at the hospital but is able to work out who the real murderer is. There is a happy ending with the lovers reunited.

A savvy Hitchcock smartly (and with more than a little modest deference) enlisted surrealist artist Salvador Dali to design the film's famous dream sequences, envisioned by Peck while under hypnosis, and those haunting, hallucinatory visions of card games, eyes, and strange landscapes remain justly lauded as mini works of art in and of themselves. Equally pioneering was Miklós Rózsa's Oscar-winning score, the first to incorporate the electronic hum of the Theremin, whose eerie, wavering tone became a keystone of many genre films. Even if Ben Hecht's screenplay indulges in a little too much meandering psychobabble, 'Spellbound' did serve to introduce Hitchcock's increasingly literal interest in the subconscious.