Spellbound (1945)

 Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound"

As part of his continued contract with Hollywood producer David O. Selznick, Alfred Hitchcock agreed to work on a film in which he found great interest, "Spellbound." Originally adapted from the novel "The House of Dr. Edwardes" by Hilary Saint George Saunders and Francis Beeding, the film deals heavily in psychoanalysis. After him and his wife, Alma Reville, did a treatment of the novel, Hitchcock handed the scriptwriting duties to iconic Hollywood writer Ben Hecht. 

The film stars Ingrid Bergman fresh off her massive success with "Casablanca" and "Gaslight." She plays a psychoanalyst who falls in love with the new head of the Vermont hospital she works in. However, she soon discovers that he may not be who he says he is. In fact, he may be suffering from numerous psychological issues, including dissociative amnesia. She spends the film trying to uncover the mystery of who this man is and when she does, she goes to great lengths to prove his innocence in a murder case.

With "Spellbound," Hitchcock continued fighting Selznick's control of his picture, just as he had done with "Rebecca" five years prior. He resisted the original casting choices, included Selznick's then-lover, Hollywood newcomer Jennifer Jones. He also fought constantly with Selznick's real life therapist, who was brought on set to consult for the film. Perhaps one of the most frustrating consequences of Selznick's rigid control was his removal of much of the surrealist dream sequence that happens in the film. The sequence as it stands today is only a couple of minutes long, however, it essentially is the most artistically significant element of the film. Hitchcock had hired renowned artist Salvador Dali to conceive the sequence. The sequence contains surrealist imagery that is eventually interpreted by the characters of the film to mean an objective, literal interpretation. The original sequence was twenty minutes long, but was cut to two minutes by Selznick. The original footage now remains a lost. 

Despite their frustrations with each other, Hitchcock and Selznick produced yet another critical and commercial success. It broke ticket sales records in London and was nominated for six Academy Awards. Today, it is considered one a Hitchcock classic. 

In watching the film, I found myself unamused for the first hour. The characters are uninteresting. The story starts out uninteresting, as well. The romance elements of the film seem convoluted and makeshift. However, as you get closer to uncovering the truth of what's happening, you begin to become invested. Not in the characters, really. I felt interested in the objective facts of the mystery as it's unfolding. This seems ironic, seeing as how the main thematic crux of the story is that love and emotion are more confounding and unexplainable (and interesting) than the cold, hard facts that these psychoanalysts love to mull over. And yet, the emotional elements of the story left me feeling nothing. Because of this, I felt I learned the opposite lesson the story was attempting to teach me. I could not care less about the 'unexplained' realms of the heart and was more exhilarated about the actual happening of this twisted turn of events.