Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Spellbound’ still mesmerizes viewers

The Internet Movie Database lists the fol­low­ing terms for this Reel Classic film: film noir, psy­cho­log­i­cal dra­ma, psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller, mys­tery, and romance. It is all of those with an out­stand­ing cast includ­ing Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Leo G. Carroll, and Rhonda Fleming. 

Our film is Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound.  

The set­ting is a men­tal hos­pi­tal in Vermont known as Green Manors. We are quick­ly intro­duced to sev­er­al of the attend­ing psy­chi­a­trists, includ­ing Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman). The hospital’s direc­tor, Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll), is being replaced after being forced to leave due to an absence relat­ed to ner­vous exhaus­tion. His replace­ment is a young Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck). It does not take long for a mutu­al attrac­tion to devel­op between Dr. Petersen and Dr. Edwardes. It turns out that Dr. Petersen has been a fan of the writ­ings of Dr. Edwardes and has a book he wrote on her library shelf. 

As they get to know each oth­er bet­ter, it is not long before she notices con­cern­ing behav­ior on his part. One is a pecu­liar reac­tion to par­al­lel lines on a white back­ground she has made on a table­cloth, demon­strat­ing a design, and anoth­er time with the lines on her robe. She comes to learn that he is not who he says he is when she com­pares his sig­na­ture on a note to an auto­graph in one of his books. 

She con­fronts him, and he admits he is not Dr. Edwardes and does not know who he is — he is suf­fer­ing from amne­sia. He believes he has killed Dr. Edwardes and has assumed his iden­ti­ty. Dr. Petersen believes him to be inno­cent and suf­fer­ing from a guilt com­plex. He dis­ap­pears overnight from the hos­pi­tal, and Dr. Edwardes’ assis­tant shows up to inform the hos­pi­tal staff that the man who claimed to be Dr. Edwardes is an impos­tor and the real Dr. Edwardes is miss­ing. Dr. Murchison resumes his role as director. 

Meanwhile, Dr. Petersen has tracked down the miss­ing man, who is stay­ing at a hotel in New York City under the name John Brown. She is adamant that psy­cho­analy­sis can help him regain his mem­o­ry and con­vinces him to trav­el with her to upstate New York to vis­it her friend and men­tor, Dr. Alexander Brulov (Michael Chekhov). 

Dr. Brulov agrees to let them stay and offers to assist Dr. Petersen in her efforts to restore the mem­o­ry of who is now John Brown. Brown has a very dis­turbed and trou­bling night, and the next day, he explains to the two psy­cho­an­a­lysts that he had a very dis­turb­ing dream. The dream includ­ed bizarre scenes where he was in a club play­ing cards, and the club was dec­o­rat­ed with huge eye­balls. His card part­ner is accused of cheat­ing and is threat­ened by the masked own­er of the club. A woman resem­bling Dr. Petersen is going around kiss­ing every­one, and sud­den­ly he sees his card part­ner fall from a slop­ing roof. It ends with him being chased down a slope by a pair of wings. 

Dr. Brulov and Dr. Petersen sur­mise that the old­er man falling from the slope was Dr. Edwardes and that Brown’s reac­tion to the par­al­lel lines were ski tracks in the snow. By inter­pret­ing the sym­bols in the dream, they sur­mise that Brown and Edwardes were togeth­er at a local ski resort, and Dr. Petersen accom­pa­nies Brown there to con­tin­ue work­ing on restor­ing his memory. 

Upon their arrival, they decide to ski the slope to see if that brings back any more mem­o­ries. Upon doing so, his mem­o­ry begins to return, includ­ing his own name, John Ballantyne, and his rela­tion­ship with Dr. Edwardes. He remem­bers the inci­dent in which Dr. Edwardes dies and is accom­pa­nied by Dr. Petersen to the police, and, with Ballantyne’s assis­tance, they find the body and learn he had been mur­dered. However, this is far from the end of the sto­ry. There are sev­er­al twists and turns yet to be expe­ri­enced, but with the thought of no spoil­ers, I will stop the sto­ry here. 

Remember, this is Alfred Hitchcock; twists and turns are guaranteed. 

Producer David Selznick had worked with Hitchcock in the past and want­ed him to make a film deal­ing with psy­cho­analy­sis. Selznick had been to a psy­cho­an­a­lyst and was eager to share the pos­i­tive expe­ri­ence. In fact, he brought his ther­a­pist on and gave her screen cred­it as a con­sul­tant. At Hitchcock’s sug­ges­tion, Selznick had bought the rights to the 1927 nov­el The House of Dr. Edwardes, and in December 1943 Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, began to work on adapt­ing the nov­el. In January 1944, they brought on Angus MacPhail to assist them with the adap­ta­tion. MacPhail had worked with Hitchcock pre­vi­ous­ly. Their com­plet­ed effort was then giv­en to screen­play writer Ben Hecht. Hecht worked with Hitchcock on sev­er­al films, includ­ing Notorious and Rope.  

Rhonda Fleming played Mary Carmichael, a patient at the men­tal hos­pi­tal. Carmichael was por­trayed as a vio­lent nympho­ma­ni­ac. A num­ber of her scenes were cut from the movie due to objec­tions from the Production Code Administration (Hay’s Office). That wasn’t her only cut in the film. The movie’s theme had lyrics and was sung by Fleming. However, Hitchcock and Selznick chose to cut that as well. 

One of the more inter­est­ing and bizarre scenes from the film was the dream sequence. Alfred Hitchcock was a big fan of the sur­re­al­ist artist Salvador Dali. Dali was hired to devel­op John Brown’s bizarre dream, and the sequence ran for 20 min­utes. It even­tu­al­ly was pared down to about two min­utes. Dali was paid $4,000 for his efforts. Selznick was ini­tial­ly opposed to spend­ing that much but real­ized that Dali’s name could serve as a mar­ket­ing device for the film. 
 

David Selznick was noto­ri­ous for his involve­ment in the pro­duc­tion of the films he pro­duced. Alfred Hitchcock was adamant that he want­ed no inter­fer­ence in his film­mak­ing. When Selznick showed up on the set, inter­est­ing­ly enough, the cam­eras often failed to work prop­er­ly. Fortunately, they resumed func­tion­ing again after the pro­duc­er left. 

This was one of Gregory Peck’s ear­li­est films. He appeared in his first film only a year ear­li­er, and this was his fourth. He had not been Hitchcock’s first choice, how­ev­er. Hitchcock had hoped to get Cary Grant, and Joseph Cotten was his sec­ond choice. Fortunately for Peck, those two did not end up with the role. 

The con­nec­tion between Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman worked very well on screen and, report­ed­ly, off screen as well. In a 1987 inter­view, five years after Ingrid Bergman’s death, he implied that he and Bergman had a brief affair. In the inter­view appear­ing in People Magazine, he said, “All I can say is that I had a fiery kin­da love for her, and I think that’s where I ought to stop...I was young. She was young. We were involved for weeks in close and intense work.” 

Spellbound received pos­i­tive reviews from crit­ics and view­ers alike. It grossed almost $8 mil­lion and was the third-high­est-gross­ing film of 1945. The crit­ic for Newsweek described it as “a supe­ri­or and sus­pense­ful melo­dra­ma.” In describ­ing Hitchcock’s efforts, the review­er for The New Yorker wrote, “Fortunately, the English expert hasn’t for­got­ten any of his tricks. He still has a nice regard for sup­ple­men­tary char­ac­ters, and he uses every­thing from train whis­tles to grand orches­tral crescen­dos to main­tain excite­ment at a shrill pitch...All in all, you’d bet­ter see this one.”

Spellbound was nom­i­nat­ed for six Oscars, includ­ing Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Michael Chekhov), and Best Original Score (which it won). The sound­track to the film, com­posed by Miklos Rozsa, sold well, and Rozsa lat­er devel­oped the “Spellbound Concerto” for piano and orchestra. 

The film was lat­er adapt­ed twice for radio, first in 1948 on Lux Radio Theatre (star­ring Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli) and again in 1951 on NBC’s Screen Director’s Playhouse (star­ring Joseph Cotten and Mercedes McCambridge). Both were direct­ed by Alfred Hitchcock. An adap­ta­tion was brought to tele­vi­sion in 1962 on NBC’s Theatre ’62. This film starred Hugh O’Brien, Oscar Homolka, and Maureen O’Hara.  

The suc­cess of Spellbound led to a reunit­ing of Hitchcock, screen­writer Ben Hecht, and actress Ingrid Bergman the fol­low­ing year in the film Notorious (also star­ring Cary Grant and Claude Rains). Another inter­est­ing note is that Leo G. Carroll was appar­ent­ly a favorite of Hitchcock’s, as he appeared in six of his films. The oth­ers were Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), The Paradine Case (1947), Strangers On A Train (1951), and North By Northwest (1959). 

The Internet Movie Database rates Spellbound at 7.5 out of 10. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a Critics Score of 86% and an Audience Score of 82%. In search­ing my Roku device, I could find no free stream­ing sites, but there is a copy of the DVD on the shelf at the Clark County Public Library. 

I will end with a quote from well-known film crit­ic Roger Ebert. 

“Hitchcock...remains not only the Master of Suspense but a grand­mas­ter of the cin­e­ma, whose films are so dis­tinc­tive that any­one famil­iar with his work can spot one after just a few shots.” Though Hitchcock began his career dur­ing the peri­od of silent films, he churned out many mas­ter­pieces and made films into the 1970s. He was a mas­ter and Spellbound is an excel­lent exam­ple of his art. — Roger Ebert in 2022

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from sources includ­ing the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.