Spellbound (1945) So sorry to miss posting yesterday, but medical issues consumed our day......(strong advice to one and all: avoid getting old at at all costs, it sucks. Even stronger advice: ignore previous advice and stay alive, happy and healthy as long as you humanly can.....until someone conclusively proves otherwise, it's more fun than dropping dead......or so they say.....)
As long as we're on a health kick......and as long as we just defended Hitchcock's Grand Opera psychological thriller 'Marnie', let's deal with "Spellbound", Hitch's very first swing at psycho-sexual shennanigans.......so everyone out of the pool and back on the couch!
Mega Mogul and infamous Mega Micro Manager David O. Selznick instigated this plunge into psychoanalytical suspense.......(using Freudian technique to unlock the mysteries of the human mind swept over Hollywood faster than yoga, pilates, Tai Chi, frisbees and hula hoops.....)
And the material seemed pitch perfect for Hitchcock, with his galleries of mentally dysfunctional villains and heroes........and let's face it for filmmakers,, nothing's scarier and creepier than loonies on the loose......
So off we go, after the gorgeously romantic theme music by Miklos Rosza, to 'Green Meadows' the film's posh Funny Farm. Comely, shy and empathetic Dr. Peterson (Ingrid Bergman) skillfully copes with a sexually harassing colleague and her unstable patients, a raging nympho (Rhonda Fleming) and a suicidal knife-lover (long time Hitchcock associate Norman Lloyd, who's still with us at age 105!)
Into this cauldron of crazies comes the new head man, young Dr. Edwardes (Gregory Peck) who's there to replace the retiring Dr. Murchison (Leo G. Carroll), deemed unfit from his own recent nervous breakdown.
It's literally love at first sight for Peck and Bergman...... (in case you don't get it, the music heaves over a symbolic shot of opening doors).......but it's also clear that Doc Edwardes is something of a wack-a-doodle himself, going bonkers whenever he spots dark lines against a white background (cue maestro Rosza to rev up the ever woo-wooing Theramin. that electronic announcer of oncoming weirdness.....)
And it isn't long before Bergman discovers Peck's an amnesiac who may well have offed the real Dr. Edwardes before showing up at the loony bin to replace him. Trusting her undying, almost evangelical faith in both psychoanalysis and Peck's innocence, Bergman goes on the run with him before the cops close in.
What's startles here are Peck's angry eruptions at the endlessly patient Bergman's attempts to head-shrink his deeply hidden psychoses ("If there's anything I hate, it's a smug woman!") But even more arresting, intentionally so, is the film's most famous touchstone, the bizarre dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali........loaded with hidden clues as to who did what to whom......
Speaking of arresting, the cops pin Dr. Edwardes murder on Peck and it's up to the plucky Bergman to do a dramatic face-off with the real killer, ending in one of Hitchcock' most obvious but memorable special effects shots......
Quite a package overall and still enormously entertaining, even with its facile, overly glossed-over depictions of psychology, which were in indeed mocked and derided at the time the film's release........(and 19 years later in 1964, Hitchcock would suffer the same roasting over "Marnie"s use of mental illness as a plot engine......see our post of a few days ago....)
If you haven't yet delved into the mysteries of 'Spellbound' then by all means schedule yourself a therapy session soon.....it's essential 4 star (****) viewing for all movie buffs.......and for some extra fun, if you've the time for a double feature, pair it up with Mel Brooks' loving, spoofing tribute to it, "High Anxiety.". In both films, the inmates run the asylum......
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