Spellbound (The Criterion Collection)
by Alfred Hitchcock
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, Leo G. Carroll, Michael Chekhov, Rhonda FlemingDirector: Alfred Hitchcock
Producer: David O. Selznick
Writer: Angus MacPhail
Writer: Ben Hecht
Writer: Frances Beeding
Writer: Hilary St. George Sanders
Writer: John Palmer
Writer: May E. Romm
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, DVD, 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 (The Criterion Collection)
Movie Review: No, it's not Hitchcock at his best, but it will do
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the 89th review of Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound" for Amazon US and the 11th for Amazon UK, and it specifically refers to the Criterion Collection version.
The film is an offspring of the not entirely happy coupling of two of Hollywood's greatest egos, Hitchcock and David O. Selznick. (And it should not be forgotten that there was also a screenwriter who was not exactly famed as a shrinking violet, Ben Hecht.)
The film was loosely based--very loosely based!--on a novel called "The House of Doctor Edwardes," which must surely have been one of the most gawdawful books published during the whole decade of the 1920s. Sould anyone doubt that assessment, I direct him or her to the summary of the book's plot so thoughtfully provided by the resident sadists at Criterion. The book went through the hands of a file of consecutive screenwriters, doubtless with Selznick and Hitchcock making of their lives a misery, each in his own inimitable way. When all was said and done, Hecht at the end of the line finally emerged with a shootable script, all that was left of the novel was a young, female analyst working in an asylum directed by Dr. Edwardes--who turns out not to be Dr. Edwardes at all.
Selznick was a true believer in psychoanalysis. (He even brought in his own analyst as an advisor--and gave him screen credit!) Hitchcock was apparently considerably less than fervent. Heaven only knows what Hecht believed.
A close watch of the film will disclose all three of these strains: the fervent desire of a disciple to spread the gospel of psychoanalysis, a haunting feeling that the psychobabble is simply a means to the end of the writer cashing a large check, enough directorial flourishes and sleights-of-hand to suggest that even though stuck with this mush, there ought to be a way to make it interesting--and, what the heck, just toss in Salvador Dali for the surrealistic weirdness of it all.
So much for the nit-picking. Does the film work? Sure it does. It has Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, how could it not?
And there's more, for one of the good things about working for Selznick was that he would populate the screen with fine actors, right across the board. A very young Rhonda Fleming starts off the film with a nice little cameo role. After her comes that ever-fascinating authority figure and Hitchcock semi-regular, Leo G. Carroll. And then one-by-one follow a parade of performers to whom a viewer might not readily attach names, but whose faces and voices are always familiar.
There is one exception to the parade of familiarity. It is the elderly psychiatrist who was the mentor to Bergman's character. I don't know him from any film but this, but even so, he is familiar in his own as a standard Hitchcock character: the wise old man who knows all the right answers but who proves in the end to be ineffectual. He is here in "Spellbound" and he is in "Foreigh Correspondent" as the kidnaped politician and again in "Stage Fright" in the form of Alistair Sim as the heroine's not particularly useful father.
The Criterion Collection version looks pretty good, although the underlying print shows just a bit of wear if you bother looking for it. The soundtrack is set at an annoyingly low level and the musical score was recorded in the boxy manner of the mid-1940s. This version comes with a musical overture and afterpiece, if anyone really cares. It has the hallowed three frames of red which are so dear to the hearts of the Hitchcock groupies. It is also burdened with the dead weight of a commentary by a woman who resolutely ignores the nuts and bolts of movie-making in favor of endless explications of the painfully bleeding obvious.
"Spellbound" is not A-list Hitchcock. Not even The Master could hit a homerun every time. But B-list Hitchcock still tops just about everybody else.
"Spellbound" is worth your time to watch it, and that makes it worth five stars to me.
Summary of Spellbound (The Criterion Collection)
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. Miklós Rózsa'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 EmersonSimilar DVD Movies
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