Spellbound ends with a brilliant shot of a revolving revolving but possibly the most famous scene is of a kiss between Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck that is followed by shots of seven doors opening in quick succession. Bergaman is beautiful and Peck is perfect and there are great cameos from Leo G. Carol and Micheal Chekov. It's also memorable for it's bonkers Salvador Dali dream sequence.
Hitchcock said that of the 50 films he made his personal favourite was Shadow of a Doubt which he made two years earlier. His take on Spellbound is that it's not so hot, ("just another manhunt story wrapped up in Pseudo- Psychoanalysis.") but I think he's being way too harsh. The film's eerie soundtrack by Miklos Rozsa won an Oscar and popularised the theremin (later made even more famous by Brian Wilson in his song Good Vibrations.
Spellbound was produced by David O. Selznick whose previous two films were Gone With The Wind, and Rebecca. Despite Selznick's success he was not a happy man until he discovered therapy. It was Selznick who wanted Francis Beeding's novel, The House of Dr Edwardes turned into a film. Because it was Selznick who got the ball rolling I think there is an unfair tendency amongst critics to dismiss the movie as being a vanity project. The plot of a therapist falling in love with a patient with amnesia is easy to pick holes in. Mel Brooks found it easy to spoof the story in his film High Anxiety. Although it's not a masterpiece there is something about the chemistry between Bergman and Peck that makes Spellbound a must see. You'd be mad to pass this film by.
Text by Astrid Horkheimer 2018
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