Spellbound - Criterion Collection
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Art Baker, Ingrid Bergman, Jean Acker, Leo G. Carroll, Michael ChekhovPrimary Contributor: Ingrid Bergman
Primary Contributor: Gregory Peck
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 111 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-09-24
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Spellbound - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Perhaps not spellbindg but definitely binding!
Summary: 4 Stars
Hitchcock elicits a mixed bag of emotions from me. I am just a little too young to have been transfixed, dare I say spellbound?, by the man and his works as millions of Americans were during Hitchcock's peak. Being a callow youth at the tale end, so to speak, of his career and unappreciative of the art I remember that Birds scared the b'jeezus out of me, that I was too young to watch Psycho, and very little else.
Everything else I saw at a later date seemed fine but dated, perhaps quaint. It came as a huge surprise then to finally discover and appreciate the man's art simply by watching this movie.
The story revolves around a young professional woman who goes on the lam with a man who is at once her boss, her patient, her true love and a murderer. Sounds complicated, I know, and perhaps uninteresting because too much, but this movie really works. It helps that Ingrid Bergman is at the top of her game and plays the role of naive, beautiful, love-struck maiden with sublimity. Gregory Peck, the leading man, does an adequate job of portraying the anguish and anxiety of a man on the brink of madness.
It is Hitchcock's genius itself which gives the film its hard edges and enjoyable quirks, (He, by the way, is the man leaving the elevator with a violin case), through very simple plot devices. He has an amazing ability to change the mood in the movie in an instant merely by inserting a certain piece of music, or placing one signature next to another without anything else changing (It is no coincidence that Hitchcock's most notorious scene can be conjured with just three notes from a violin).
In this film Hitchcock pulls us along as the film proceeds from mundane to sinister to charming to chilling to disappointing and finally to shocking and all the while the audience is left thinking to itself that the ending is fairly predictable if one is given three or four chances to guess it. You know what? You never will.
Summary of Spellbound - Criterion Collection
Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) is a psychiatrist with a firm understanding of human nature-or so she thinks. When the mysterious Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck) becomes the new chief of staff at her institution, the bookish and detached Constance plummets into a whirlwind of tangled identities and feverish psychoanalysis, where the greatest risk is to fall in love. A transcendent love story replete with taut excitement and startling imagery, Spellbound is classic Hitchcock, featuring stunning performances, an Academy Award(r)-winning score by Miklos Rozsa, and a captivating dream sequence by Surrealist icon Salvador Dali.Alfred Hitchcock takes on Sigmund Freud in this thriller in which psychologist Ingrid Bergman tries to solve a murder by unlocking the clues hidden in the mind of amnesiac suspect Gregory Peck. Among the highlights is a bizarre dream sequence seemingly designed by Salvador Dali--complete with huge eyeballs and pointy scissors. Although the film is in black and white, the original release contained one subliminal blood-red frame, appearing when a gun pointed directly at the camera goes off. Spellbound is one of Hitchcock's strangest and most atmospheric films, providing the director with plenty of opportunities to explore what he called "pure cinema"--i.e., the power of pure visual associations. Mikl?s R?zsa's haunting score (which features a creepy theremin) won an Oscar, and the movie was nominated for best picture, director, supporting actor (Michael Chekhov), cinematography, and special visual effects. --Jim Emerson
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